He [my father] didn't have a basement workshop as such, but I know that he did build things, construct things, repair things. My mother, likewise, was sewing and doing activities that often take place in a household.

I was always making things. I made model airplanes and did a number of hands-on activities. I liked creating in some form or another, not realizing what it was all about.

I got the letter about becoming a Sir in 2000, the same year that Pauline asked me if we could finally get married. My assistant, Colette, called up and it turned out both the wedding and the Buck House ceremony were happening on the same day. I was knighted at 11 and married at four. She became an instant Lady.

Charles Burchfield was exceptional. As such an accomplished artist, he had limited previous association with academia and teaching.

The Japanese are hard to understand, but once you do the world is your oyster.

At the end of the elementary program, I then had to move onto high school. Simultaneously, my parents moved to Attica to a suburban area not far from the well-known Attica State Prison. Then I would take the school bus which was a very short distance away, where I was involved with a much larger community.

Jack Sturtzer, one of my cousins, had gone to art school and suggested that I might be interested in a private school called the Art Institute of Buffalo, and in fact that is what happened. So upon graduation in 1948, I then went to stay with my cousins on Seventeenth Street and enrolled in the program at the Art Institute on Elmwood Avenue.