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

You might say that a creative person is a person who simply has a desire to have something, to add something to the world that's not there yet, and goes about arranging fort that to happen. When you desire a work of art and make it, you've added to the stock of art in the world. Artists are one of the people who can do that: add to the stock of things.

I had no place to put anything. I would give my sculpture away because I had no place to put it.

Look at the chaos of European history. Europeans cannot believe in certainty. But Americans believe in certainty. Americans think this can go on like this forever. Just as it is. No change.

An artist, to achieve anything in art, has to finally do the thing that nobody else wants to do and nobody else has thought to do.

By nature, I am a materialist... It is exactly these impingements upon our sense of touch and so forth that I'm interested in.

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