If you have total freedom, then you are in trouble. It's much better when you have some obligation, some discipline, some rules. When you have no rules, then you start to build your own rules.

You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house.

Light has not just intensity, but also a vibration, which is capable of roughening a smooth material, of giving a three-dimensional quality to a flat surface.

Architects have to dream, we have to search for our Atlantises, to be explorers, adventurers, and yet to build responsibly and well.

When a man is not satisfied with a house where he lives, he becomes an architect

Architecture is art, but art vastly contaminated by many other things. Contaminated in the best sense of the word – fed, fertilised by many things.

You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony

A museum is a place where one should lose one's head.

Architecture is an imposed art in some ways, imposed upon the public, so people must be sure about what you're doing. You have to be sure about what you're doing.

Knowing how to do things not just with the head, but with the hands as well: this might seem a programmatic and ideological goal. It is not. It is a way of safeguarding creative freedom.

A builder is like a little god - somebody who does things, doesnt just draw things.

Who except the gods can live without any pain?

Achievement: The death of an endeavor and the birth of disgust.

Settling other people's land is an American tradition.

Look at politics; they're always in competition over an election, who wants to win. It's just who we are, it's what we do.

What’s the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you’re faking.

Look to yourself for the answer - stop calling your girlfriends and stop calling your mom - you know if it's working or not, you either feel like a goddess or you don't

Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.

I think having eight kids evens things out a bit. You learn about the world; you learn about the world; you learn you've got to get along. We're all - if anything - very adjustable.

I have never seen a beautiful painting of a beautiful woman. But you can take an ugly woman and make a beautiful painting of her. It is the painting itself that should be beautiful.

India claimed to have intervened in Sri Lanka to secure Tamil interests. In actual fact, India came to secure its own interests.