I've said goodbye to the overworked notion that architecture has to save the world.

When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material. I believe architecture is about that. It's not about paper, it's not about forms. It's about space and material.

In order to design buildings with a sensuous connection to life, one must think in a way that goes far beyond form and construction.

My buildings should have an emotional core –a space which, in itself, has an emotional nice feeling.

I think space, architectural space, is my thing. It's not about facade, elevation, making image, making money. My passion is creating space.

If you're lucky, and a building succeeds, the real product has many more dimensions than you can ever imagine. You have the sun, the light, the rain, the birds, the feel.

Architecture is not about form

Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.

Presence is like a gap in the flow of history, where all of [a] sudden it is not past and not future.

What I try to do is the art of building, and the art of building is the art of construction; it is not only about forms and shapes and images.

In a society that celebrates the inessential, architecture can put up a resistance, counteract the waste of forms and meanings and speak its own language.

It's all right to be afraid. You just don't let it stop you from doing your job.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Ironically, women who acquire power are more likely to be criticized for it than are the men who have always had it.

What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.

Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people.

Sometimes a bit of distance can be very healthy. You can go away by yourself on a trip and come back very glad to be with your partner because you've cleared your head out of all the negativity.

I look into his eyes, no longer afraid what's in them, but afriad I'll lose what they carry.

I've always wondered, am I a writer who preaches or a preacher who writes? I don't know. I love them both.

I started pulling gags on Al [Pachino]. That was the moment I realized that he was absolutely out of his mind. I mean that he's certifiably insane. I wouldn't spend a night in a room where he's at.

It's in Macbeth: "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon." I seldom have occasion to pull it out, but it's ready and waiting!