I obey nature, I never presume to command her. The first principal in art is to copy what one sees. - Auguste Rodin

Gsell: What astonishes me, is that your way is so different from that of other sculptors. They prose the model. Instead of that, you wait till a model has instinctively or accidentally taken an Interesting pose, and thon you reproduce It. Instead of your giving orders to the model, the model gives orders to you.

Michelangelo, revealed me to myself, revealed to me the truth of forms. I went to Florence to find what I possessed in Paris and elsewhere, but it is he who taught me this.

If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain is that of the soul; that alone matters; it is that which the sculptor or painter should seek beneath the mask of features.