“One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material that one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole.”

Body experience… is the centre of creation.

I love my blocks of marble, always piling up in the yard like a flock of sheep.

I rarely draw what I see. I draw what I feel in my body.

The naturalness of life… the sense of community is, I think, a very important factor in an artist’s life.

It is easy now to communicate with people through abstraction, and particularly so in sculpture. Since the whole body reacts to its presence, people become themselves a living part of the whole.

I must always have a clear image of the form of a work before I begin. Otherwise there is no impulse to create.

My works are an imitation of my own past and present.

I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism.

I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour

The sculptor must search with passionate intensity for the underlying principle of the organisation of mass and tension – the meaning of gesture and the structure of rhythm.

The United Nations is our conscience. If it succeeds it is our success. If it fails it is our failure.

My left hand is my thinking hand (image), my right hand my doing hand (sequence).

I found one had to do some work every day, even at midnight, because either you’re professional or you’re not.

Whenever I am embraced by land and seascape I draw ideas for new sculptures; new forms to touch and walk around, new people to embrace, with an exactitude of form that those without sight can hold and realize… …It is essentially practical and passionate.

Halfway through any work, one is often tempted to go off on a tangent. Once you have yielded, you will be tempted to yield again and again… Finally, you would only produce something hybrid.

[My works are] an imitation of my own past and present and of my own creative vitality as I experience them in one particular instant of my emotional and imaginative life. . .

It’s a proprietary strategy. I can’t go into it in great detail.

Patience is a most necessary qualification for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request.

Tom’s [Brady] personal preferences on his footballs are something he can take about in much better detail and information than I could possibly provide.

Sometimes when you start losing detail, whether it’s in music or in life, something as small as failing to be polite, you start to lose substance.

I generally leave the details of fiscal programs to the Administration and Congress. That’s really their area of authority and responsibility, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to second guess.

[Scott Derrickson] is terrific, really sharp on the details, and he’s not afraid to go to dark places.

Transparency and detail are everything in science.

I don’t know why people are so keen to put the details of their private life in public; they forget that invisibility is a superpower.