- Louise Nevelson: In the Second World War there were no materials, but there still was creativity. So you either had to stop working, or go on working. Life means going on and death means stopping. And so the only thing that was available... I began to use wood. At that time I don't think there were sculptors using wood, unless they were using it to carve away, instead of assemblage. So I began and it pleased me. First the intimacy and second the immediacy.
- David Smith: I want to be like a poet, in a sense... I don't want to seek the same orders. But how can a man live off of his planet... how on earth can he known anything that he hasn't seen, or doesn't exist in his own world... even his visions have to be made up of what he knows. There is no such thing as truly abstract. Man always has to work from his life.
- Isamu Noguchi: Sometimes I think I am part of this world of today- sometimes I feel that I belong in history or in prehistory or that there is no such thing as time. But if you want to escape from that time constraint then the whole world, not just the most industrialized world, but the whole world is someplace where you belong.
- George Segal: I would like to stay close to a process that is alive for me. If I want to deal with the observed world and my memory of the observed world, and I want to deal with the gestures of a human being in a real space, that allows me to deal with history, memory, psychology, sexual fantasy, eroticism, my daily pleasures, hallucination, fear, fright, everything. I don't want to be arbitrarily shut off or forbidden by intellectual decisions.