It 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.

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

Recently 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.

I 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.

I 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.

The important thing is somehow to begin.

Never think of the surface except as an extension of a volume.