The people with money to build today are corporations - they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?

The future of architecture is culture.

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it; to make something new of it; not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.

Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.

Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven's 'Eighth' does?

If architects weren't arrogant, they wouldn't be architects. I don't know a modest good architect.

We do pretty much whatever we want to.

Architecture is art, nothing else.

I think beauty is rarely worth the trouble.” Shahrzad gripped Irsa’s hand tighter in sisterly solidarity. “But I am worth a great deal more than what you see.

Being honest may not get you a lot of friends it’ll get you the right ones

Flowers still have to stretch to bloom.

Whatever is about you that is translated into your art, that's gonna keep you completly original and fresh and I just think that, that's just the best advice I can give, to an artist creatively.

Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.

I love to write - it is a great source of reflection, especially as I continue to meet many new inspiring people.

If you begin to give away parts of yourself, eventually you'll give it all. And once you've lost yourself, haven't you lost everything?

We trace the hand of the Almighty in framing the Constitution of our land

I definitely don't want to do drama. I'm not looking to branch out into that world.

I would not rule out going to Israel because I disapprove of the foreign policy any more than I would refuse to play in the UK because I disapprove of Tony Blair's foreign policy.