I'm suspicious of the idea of architects acting like business executives, brand managers, or purveyors of luxury goods.

The difference between good and bad architecture is the time you spend on it.

A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.

You don't restore 'The Last Supper' by filling in the missing bits - you preserve. You accept the material that has somehow survived.

I suppose I'm trying to build an architecture that's as timeless as possible, although we're all creatures of our age.

I may not be the most interesting architect, but I'm still out there and have maintained some position of integrity.

Most architects work in ­studios largely divorced from academia, as if ideas, criticism and ­historical ­research were irrelevant.

I don't think architecture is radical. How can something that takes years and costs millions be radical?

Britain gets the architecture it deserves. We don’t value architecture, we don’t take it seriously, we don’t want to pay for it and the architect isn’t trusted.

If you look at a building by Mies van der Rohe, it might look very simple, but up close, the sheer quality of construction, materials and thought are inspirational.

Britain loves a bargain, but you don't get good, lasting architecture on the cheap.

I find learning to be the most valuable of all the treasures in the world. It's priceless.

Just because a relationship ends, does not mean it's not worth having.

Everyday, there are choices to make and sometimes you make a selfish one.

When I was a teenager, I thought nothing would ever happen to me because my childhood was so normal. I had this complex of normality.

We're a nation of exhausted and over-stressed adults raising over-scheduled children.

Dikaios smacked Elam with his tail. "His curiosity wouldn't kill a sick kitten, much less a cat.

Love is man's natural endowment, but he doesn't know how to use it. He refuses to recognize the power of love because of his love of power.

If my words fail, let my eyes and my heart be my language.

As the rain falls so does your love bathe every open object of the world

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863...