We both [with Alixandra Kolesky MacKenzie] got into ceramics, you might say, by the back door. Looking back on it, I think this was a very good thing.

We'll be potters, we'll be painters, we'll be textile designers, we'll be jewelers, we'll be a little this, a little of that. We were going to be the renaissance people [when we were young].

In fact, I believe to a certain extent a person today who starts with just clay, with no drawing and no painting and no figure drawing, still-life drawing, various things, they miss a great deal.

So I very quickly stopped almost all decoration. I was interested in the three-dimensional form of the pots, but my decoration was nonexistent.

Every pot is not going to be a masterpiece.

Alix [ MacKenzie] had stopped teaching because we had a child and she stayed home to take care of the baby, and I taught.

[Shoji] Hamada seldom drew an exact drawing of a pot that he was going to make.

It was a wonderful opportunity. And so for two and a half years we lived with [Bernard] Leach.

Bernard's [Leach] drawings delineated every little accent on the pot, every subtle curve and change of angle and proportion and all.

Bernard [Leach] was making pots which were duplicates of his drawing, and that was a difference of approach, which I think is quite critical to these two men [Leach and Shoji Hamada].

And as far as I know about Alix's [MacKenzie] work, I don't believe she ever did any sculptural work at all. It was always pottery.

All that you have been is but a small part, a very mere bit of the potential of your life.

Single misfortunes never come alone, and the greatest of all national calamities is generally followed by one greater.

Small unit democracy, I found early on, didn't work for me.

Any party which takes credit for the rain must not be surprised if its opponents blame it for the drought.

The image of ourselves in the minds of others is the picture of a stranger we shall never see.

Someone else would come, another self that was a little more refined, that had a little more purity, a little more humility, because I was quite egotistical, I thought I was quite wonderful.

Theoretical physicists live in a classical world, looking out into a quantum-mechanical world. The latter we describe only subjectively, in terms of procedures and results in our classical domain.

A little part of my life is built around ancient art.

With time, many of the facts I learned were forgotten but I never lost the excitement of discovery.

Never trust a journalist.