You can find out how to do something and then do it or do something and then find out what you did.

When an artist stopped being a child, he would stop being an artist.

The attractions of ceramics lie partly in its contradictions. It is both difficult and easy, with an element beyond our control. It is both extremely fragile and durable. Like 'Sumi' ink painting, it does not lend itself to erasures and indecision.

When the time came for me to work with larger spaces, I conceived them as gardens, not as sites with objects but as relationships to a whole.

It is said that stone is the affection of old men. That may be so. It is the most challenging to work. A dialogue ensues – of chance no chance, mistakes no mistakes. No erasing or reproduction is possible, at least in the way I work, leaving nature’s mark. It is unique and final.

Art should become as one with its surroundings.

Appreciate the moment.

I learned the tricks... If you want to do academic things, you can do them. It is not difficult. Yet it is from this difficulty - the mistakes and dead ends - that artists develop, not through the quick solutions and not from something you learn and apply.

For me it is the direct contact of artist to material which is original, and it is the earth and his contact to it which will free him of the artificiality of the present and his dependence on industrial products.

In my work, I wanted something irreducible, an absence of the gimmicky and clever.

We are a landscape of all we have seen.

It is weight that gives meaning to weightlessness.

I perceive my limitations even as I work. There are times when I see nothing but restrictions, barriers. Learning takes time.

The art of stone in a Japanese garden is that of placement. Its ideal does not deviate from that of nature.