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

It is futile for an artist to try to create an environment because you have an environment around you all the time. Any living organism has an environment.

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.

It seems with progress you gain certain things and you lose certain things. The automobile replaced the horse and buggy but you lost all of that nice manure.

Every time you work, you have to do it all over again, to rid yourself of this dross. I suppose for a person who is not an artist or not attempting art, it is not dross, because it is the common exchange of everyday life.

I was never good at painting. The great turning point came when I had a block of wood and I carved a shape into the wood and put a small piece of timber into that space - like a negative - and so it made an endless column, only inward.

I mean, art for art's sake is ridiculous. Art is for the sake of one's needs.