If I hadn't been a designer, I'd have been a painter. I began as a painter and learned the craft of pottery in order to support myself.

When I design something, I think of it as a gift to somebody else.

If you think of beautiful things, you’re not sad.

The pleasure of making things beautiful or useful involves your feelings as well as your thinking. When your original sketch evolves into a tangible, three-dimensional object, your heart is anxiously following the process of your work. And the love involved in making it is conveyed to those for whom you made it.

I never wanted to do something grotesque. I never wanted to shock. I wanted my audience to be happy, to be kind.

When you begin your work, nothing exists. When it is finished it looks as if it just happened, spontaneously, effortlessly, convincingly. It looks as though it had been there all along.

Everything I do is a direct creation of my hands, whether it is made in wood, plaster or clay.