Quote collection
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"I think it was Henry Moore who was asked where he got his ideas for his sculptures, and he said something like, "I continue to do as an adult the things I did as a child." I think that's what art is about."
"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.""
"I was never good at painting. The great turning point came when I had a block of wood and I carved a shape into the wood and put a small piece of timber into that space - like a negative - and so it made an endless column, only inward."
"Artists tend to be beyond embarrassment the way little children tend to be beyond embarrassment."
"Every time you work, you have to do it all over again, to rid yourself of this dross. I suppose for a person who is not an artist or not attempting art, it is not dross, because it is the common exchange of everyday life."
"People are always trading their excess for somebody else's excess. One country has a lot of aluminum so they trade aluminum for sugar. It's the law of supply and demand."
"You might say that a creative person is a person who simply has a desire to have something, to add something to the world that's not there yet, and goes about arranging fort that to happen. When you desire a work of art and make it, you've added to the stock of art in the world. Artists are one of the people who can do that: add to the stock of things."
"That's wonderful, but my mind has been destroyed by alcohol."
"You could own coins but you couldn't have bars of gold. We were on the gold standard. I think it was Nixon who took us off the gold standard."
"I've often stopped working for long periods."
"Americans understand better than the Europeans and the English that any publicity is good."
"I never stopped doing what I did as a child."
"I had no place to put anything. I would give my sculpture away because I had no place to put it."
"I think my work is very American because I'm American. But I found that Europeans like uncertainty and doubt."
"Money is a very complicated problem. The history of money is very curious."
"I've never been a representational artist at all. Most artists have been representational. That's when you discover yourself."
"I'm a feminist. I've always been in favor of women."
"I was hanging out and drinking as long as I could afford it, or as long as somebody else could afford it."
"I didn't like men, but I liked women."
"I was one of the first post-studio artists. I used to do my works in the streets. I used to find them in the streets, and I used to leave them in the streets."