Quotes from Antony Gormley

Art is the means by which we communicate what it feels like to be alive - in the past, that was mixed up with other illustrative duties, but that was still its central function that has been liberated in the art called modern.

I think that the equator could act as a great equalizer for all life on Earth, celebrated as the great energy belt of the planet. If all our energy grids were synchronized, the light side of the planet could provide energy for the dark side, according to the movement of the sun.

If your work doesn't speak to people, it's beyond comprehension and risible, but if people engage with it, you become tarred with the brush of populism.

Western Australia is covered by granite, the largest single piece of Achaean rock that still lies on the surface of the, of, of the Earth, that's 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. It's one of the most ancient and intact bits of the Earth's crust.

I feel terribly misunderstood; I feel terribly misunderstood.

Cities have become places where we are controlled, by CCTV and other means, in the same way as machines are controlled. My works provide an imaginative space in which this can be challenged. It's like opening a window in a closed room.

I was educated by monks - I thank them dearly for the education they gave me, but I am no longer a Catholic.

Art is not about objects of high monetary exchange. It's about reasserting our firsthand experience in present time.

The very first lead work that I made is called 'Land Sea and Air,' and is the enclosure of primal elements within that kind of carapace of lead.

It's wonderful to see art in a museum, but it is institutionalised. I don't like the idea of the artwork as something that requires special conditions. I would like it to be universal.

Making beautiful things for everyday use is a wonderful thing to do - making life flow more easily - but art confronts life, allowing it to stop and perhaps change direction - they are completely different.

It's a wonderful thing to make work that is unadorned either by context, framing or label, that can exist in the changing conditions of light, weather, wind.

I would like to go to Kalimantan island in Sumatra to see the carvings and longhouse sculptures. I've also always wanted to look at the wood carvings along the Sepik River in New Guinea.

Most big cities like London and Glasgow have great big rivers that are unmissable. What's brilliant about the Water of Leith is that it's so hidden. It's a secret.

How do you make the timelessness of inert, silent objects count for something? How to use the, in a way, dumbness of sculpture in a way that acts on us as living things?

I'm trying to make work that is reflective and is encouraging of reflection.

I think scale is about, in a way, the apprehension of proportion, and all the proportions that mean things to us as human beings are related to the body.

I did spend a lot of time as a child very confused about whether I had a devil in me, or whether I was in a state of grace. I mean, these ideas are so potent to anybody with half an imagination.

I want people to be excited about cooling towers and megasheds; they're as much part of our history as the rural barn.

The making of a whole person and the creation of true individuals can only happen by singing and dancing and making art.

There is no question that creative intelligence comes not through learning things you find in books or histories that have already been written, but by focusing on and giving value to experience as it happens.

It is a depressing business talking to journalist.

Judgment is very easy, but I think, on the whole, professional critics maybe see too much, and compare too much, and forget the joy of actually looking and contemplating for its own sake.

I always like to look for adventure when I go away. I have gone on several horse adventures with my wife - from Guangxi we went up to the High Tibetan region. We also went along the Hurunui River on horseback in the South Island of New Zealand.