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All Quotes by author - Philip Johnson

" All architects want to live beyond their deaths. "

" All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space. "

" 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? "

" Architecture is art, nothing else. "

" Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space. "

" Architecture is the art of how to waste space. "

" Concrete you can mold, you can press it into - after all, you haven't any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You'd be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line - how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were. "

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

" Don't build a glass house if you're worried about saving money on heating. "

" Dullness is the enemy. "

" Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice. "

" Glibness will get your anywhere. "

" Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston. "

" How does an artist know when the line that he just painted is good or not good? That's the catch. De Kooning was the greatest of my contemporaries in art, and he knew when he'd done a good line. When he didn't, he threw it away. I wish I'd thrown away some of mine. "

" I always think of buildings in their settings, but so do other architects. "

" I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life. "

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

" I get between nine and ten hours of sleep. Go to bed at 8:30 and get up at 6:00 or 6:30 if I oversleep. "

" I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original. "

" I guess I can't be a great architect. Great architects have a recognizable style. But if every building I did were the same, it would be pretty boring. "

" I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people. "

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

" I haven't any wisdom - just a child like everybody else. I'm not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright. "

" I like the thought that what we are to do on this earth is embellish it for its greater beauty, so that oncoming generations can look back to the shapes we leave here and get the same thrill that I get in looking back at theirs - at the Parthenon, at Chartres Cathedral. "

" 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. "

" I'm about four skyscrapers behind. "

" I'm a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner. "

" In my own work, I'd say I'm a classicist, but I look everywhere for my solutions. I don't study the toilet-living habits of my clients, although that's a popular approach. First, I think of every building in history that has been similar in purpose. Then I think of the functional program - that's a major part of the study. "

" It is wonderful to be in the country in a glass house, because no matter what happens out there, you're nice and safe, you know, cuddled in your little bed, and there it is, raging storms, snowing - wonderful. "

" I used to think that each phase of life was the end. But now that my view on life is more or less fixed, I believe that change is a great thing. In fact, it's the only real absolute in the world. "

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