You could own coins but you couldn't have bars of gold. We were on the gold standard. I think it was Nixon who took us off the gold standard.

Why carve? It's a better sculpture that way. I'll never improve the block. So I just started using uncarved blocks.

Lenin thought abstract art was a conspiracy by the bourgeois to demoralize the proletariat. Yeah, socialist realism!

I think it was Henry Moore who was asked where he got his ideas for his sculptures, and he said something like, "I continue to do as an adult the things I did as a child." I think that's what art is about.

New York is dead. It's too expensive.

The world is imperfect, and young people are always trying to perfect it and they always fail - which is a good thing. Who'd want to live in a perfect world?

I've often stopped working for long periods.