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.

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.

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

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.

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.

If we don't remember where we came from, we'll go back there.

If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.

I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.

If Sun were to hand the management of Java over to a committee of monkeys, would it be more successful?

It's important for me to work with a strong director because I know I can go to some really deep places, I just need direction on how to get there.

Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path

But who is ever able to apply to her own current love affair a word like "similar"?

Wars of aggression are the most barbarous of all human endeavors and are, more often than not, the instruments of insane tyrants who hear voices.

I never thought I'd be in a family that has more people than a small country.

Such as the chain of causes we call Fate, such is the chain of wishes: one links on to another; the whole man is bound in the chain of wishing for ever.