In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.

I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

If you see the world as beautiful, thrilling and mysterious, as I think I do, then you feel quite alive.

Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it.

Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is the face. It tells all.

The camera can't see space. It sees surfaces. People see space, which is much more interesting.

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time.

I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.

The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it.

Many of the women in Los Angeles are part of the notorious gang culture, and they will forever have my gratitude for, you know, letting me live.

She remembered the conversation in the Library, as forgetting was the last thing a fully-trained Librarian should do. Memories were as important as books, and almost as important as proper indexing.

I don't need anyone to rectify my existence. The most profound relationship we will ever have is the one with ourselves.

In the scientific world I find just that disinterested devotion to great ends that I hope will spread at last through the entire range of human activity.

The doom lies in yourself, not in your name.

The despotism of custom is on the wane. We are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.

In his garden every man may be his own artist without apology or explanation. Here is one spot where each may experience the "romance of possibility".

I actually don't go to shows anymore. Rock concerts have lost their appeal for me.

We shall make mistakes; and if we let these mistakes frighten us from our work we shall show ourselves weaklings.

There are three orchestras in Munich, all world-quality, in a city of one million. Yet every hall is full.