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

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

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.

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

At no point do I wish to be in conflict with any man or masculine thought. It doesn't enter my consciousness. Art is anonymous. It's not competitive with men. It's a complementary contribution.

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

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

[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. . .

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

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.

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.

I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.

We often learn to just earn dirty paper and forget to gain the wisdom needed to earn a life.

This book is dedicated to all the students I've known over the years who've taught me humility and what it means to really be a kid.

Anytime you cast a movie and you need someone famous in the lead part, you're a prisoner of whoever happens to be famous in the six-month window in which you're trying to get a film financed.

It's not virtual reality until you can be tortured to death in it.

I can always tell when a girl comes from a good family because she's what's known as not at all attracted to me.

I look at [books] as a child looks at cakes - with glittering eyes and a watering mouth, imagining the pleasure that awaits him.

Wake the sleeper must, and confront his fears, or risk being lost in the dark places of the mind forever.

It would be fair in terms of justice that those who believe in 'Life After Death' live much less than those who do not believe in such a thing!