Because 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.

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.

A piece of sculpture can have a hole through it and not be weakened if the hole is of a studied size, shape, and direction.

All 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.

Art is the expression of imagination, not the reproduction of reality.

A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.