Early in my career...I had to choose between an honest arrogance and a hypercritical humility... I deliberately choose an honest arrogance, and I've never been sorry.

The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built.

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us.

Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.

A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there.

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.

We should learn from the snail: it has devised a home that is both exquisite and functional.

No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.

Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.

He speaks in a way that leaves no room for argument, on the edge of condescension and caring. It's a trick all men of the South have to learn before they're accepted as one of the good ol' boys.

The secret to a long marriage in the film industry? Marry someone wonderful, as I did. And always have her come along on location.

We are the star and the darkness it peirces

There are two infinities: God and stupidity.

I paint from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the houses, then the cattle, and then the people.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I'm a successful writer.

You fail only if you stop writing.

I always like to keep the budget as small as possible just to have the most freedom.

Religion provides us with a puritanical dream, which can never be realized because it goes against human nature.