I'm very grateful that I was too poor to get to art school until I was 21. . . I was old enough when I got there to know how to get something out of it.
Henry MooreIt is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.
Henry MooreA work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.
Henry MooreBecause a work does not aim at reproducing natural appearances it is not, therefore, an escape from life -- but may be a penetration into reality...as expression of the significance of life, a stimulation to greater effort in living.
Henry MooreBetween beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the senses, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses.
Henry MooreI think about sculpture all the time. I work at it for ten to twelve hours a day. I even dream about it. If as a result I was only to produce something that everyone immediately understood I would't have been thinking very profoundly.
Henry MooreA sculptor is a person obsessed with the form and the shape of things, and it's not just Ihe shape of any one thing, but the shape of any thing and everything.
Henry MooreThe secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.
Henry MooreAll art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.
Henry MooreA sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds.
Henry MooreThe creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.
Henry MooreOne never knows what each day is going to bring. The important thing is to be open and ready for it.
Henry MooreRecently I have been working in the country, where, carving in the open air, I find sculpture more natural than in a London studio, but it needs bigger dimensions. A large piece of stone or wood placed almost anywhere at random in a field, orchard, or garden, immediately looks right and inspiring.
Henry MooreDiscipline in art is a fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing.
Henry MooreNow I really make the little idea from clay, and I hold it in my hand. I can turn it, look at it from underneath, see it from one view, hold it against the sky, imagine it any size I like, and really be in control almost like God creating something.
Henry MooreAll good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious. BOTH SIDES of the artist's personality must play their part.
Henry MooreI find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle . . . . In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.
Henry MooreAbstraction means getting away from a visual interpretation but nearer to an emotional one.
Henry MooreNothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas, it was its continuance which should have taught us its value. [It is wise to be grateful of what we have while we have it.]
Henry Moore