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Steinberg liked to leave the meaning of his art open to interpretation by the viewer—so much so that he often made the script and stamps illegible—made-up texts in no particular alphabet or language. What looks informative holds back information. In the 1960s, he said: “Art is a sphinx. The beauty of the sphinx is that you yourself must do the interpreting. When you have found an interpretation, you are already cured. The mistake people make is to believe that the sphinx can give only one answer. Actually, it gives hundreds of answers, or maybe none at all. Interpretation probably does not give us the truth, but the act of interpretation saves us.”