Like adverts, today's works of art aim to create a brand, even if they have no product to sell except themselves.

Art once made a cult of beauty. Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. This has made art into an elaborate joke, one which by now has ceased to be funny.

There is a deep human need for beauty and if you ignore that need in architecture your buildings will not last

Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home, and in doing so we both amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows.

The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.

Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence.

It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness.

In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines - lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure

You'll go far. How do I know? Because life is goosing you so hard you'll never stop climbing.

The more you are blessed with experience, the fuller and the more enriched you are in your craft.

I should like to take the wind and water and sand as a motif and work with them, but it has to be simplified in most cases to colour and force lines, just as music has done with sound.

The way I grew up playing, and the way most Americans have grown up, is that you hit the ball up in the air and then it stops where it lands.

I can't play my songs on the smaller harp. I have a Celtic harp. I can't do the key changes.

The greatest miracle that God can do today is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world, and make that man holy and put him back into that unholy world and keep him holy in it.

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.

I require something so horrifically alcoholic that it makes livers tremble with fear and run for their lives when its name is uttered.

Courage to be who you are is the cousin of loving the Divine, yourself and others.

It takes pride to be anxious – I am not wise enough to know how my life should go.