I wanted to invent an engine that could run for ever. I could have developed a new train, had I stayed in the railway. It would have looked like the AK-47 though.

I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work - for example a lawnmower.

I was probably born with some designing abilities.

I tried a dozen different modifications that were rejected. But they all served as a path to the final design.

When a young man, I read somewhere the following: God the Almighty said, 'All that is too complex is unnecessary, and it is simple that is needed.' So this has been my lifetime motto – I have been creating weapons to defend the borders of my fatherland, to be simple and reliable.

I've always wanted to improve and expand on the good name of my weapon by doing good things.

It is the Germans who are responsible for the fact that I became a fabricator of arms. If not for them, I would have constructed agricultural machines. (...) If someone asks me how I can sleep at night knowing that my arms have killed millions of people, I respond that I have no problem sleeping, my conscience is clean. I constructed arms to defend my country.