Certainly the main reason why I stayed with art and went to art school and didn’t become sidetracked or become anything else was really centrally just the matter of freedom. That is, to me the life of the artist is the freest life that anyone can lead and that was the basic determination; not merely that I just love to paint or draw or am a compulsive anything. It’s simply that I wouldn’t want to lead any other kind of life.
— Robert Indiana
Donald B. Goodall, "Conversations with Robert Indiana," in Robert L. B. Tobin, William Katz, and Donald B. Goodall, Robert Indiana (Austin: University of Texas, 1977), p. 25.