Henry Moore

I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years'.

I have no conceit as a writer; in fact, I find it very difficult to start writing about sculpture generally & my aims in particular.

Turner - whether on canvas or paper - can create almost measurable distances of space and air - air that you can draw, in which you can work out what the section through it would be. The space he creates is not emptiness; it is filled with 'solid' atmosphere.

I believe that nothing should be taboo - no theory or prejudice should close one's mind to a discovery.

There are universal shapes to which everybody is subconsciously conditioned and to which they can respond if their conscious control does not shut them off.

Comparing Oceanic art generally with Negro art, it has a livelier, thin flicker, but much of it is more two-dimensional and concerned with pattern making. Yet the carvings of New Ireland have, besides their vicious kind of vitality, a unique spatial sense, a bird-in-a-cage form.

The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.

The most striking quality common to all primitive art is its intense vitality. It is something made by a people with a direct and immediate response to life.

Cezanne had an enormous influence on everyone in that period; there was a change in attitudes to art. People found him disturbing because they didn't like their existing ideas being challenged and overturned. Cezanne was probably the key figure in my lifetime.

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.

So with the young African artists. What they have to learn from tribal art is not how to copy the traditional forms, but the confidence that comes from knowing that somewhere inside them there should be the vitality which enabled their fathers to produce these extraordinary and exciting forms.

A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds.