I grew up in a brick house. What's wrong with bricks? An Englishman took me aside and said, "You have to understand, all the bricklayers in England are Irish, and the English hate the Irish."

Art is the exclusion of the unnecessary.

A man climbs a mountain because it is there. An artist makes a work of art because it is not there.

My art springs from my desire to have things in the world which would otherwise never be there.

Art is an intersection of many human needs.

What do little kids do? They crawl on the floor and they build with blocks. I just continued to do that for the rest of my life.

Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us. A photograph of an art object is not the art object. An essay about an artist's work is not the artist's work.

A place is an area within an environment that has been altered in such a way to make the general environment more conspicuous.

Once you turn something into something, its universal usage is over.

Why carve? It's a better sculpture that way. I'll never improve the block. So I just started using uncarved blocks.

If you're any good as an artist, you have to be doing something nobody else has interest in. Nobody would be interested in my work except a few crazy people.

Flow wherever you go. You can’t be limited. Dare to rise above all limitations and become better than you were. Strive to arrive at the top.

That’s what getting old is: When you can no longer bear the consequences of being wrong.

We have come from a time of the large-scale, planned, Al Qaeda-style attacks, to the encouragement of lone wolves: Fort Hood, Chattanooga. To the encouragement of people to act on their own.

Fun is to experience things you would not have been able to experience in any other setting.

To stay at my best, I have to stop talking during the preceding day.

And for those of you who want to start any trouble, I have a zero tolerance policy. . . .

It is a human thing to sin, but perseverance in sin is a thing of the devil.

I'm a hopeful romantic who adores novels with happy endings, because there are enough sad endings in real life.

The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night.