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

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" Dullness is the enemy. "

" Architecture is the art of how to waste 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? "

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

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

" Maybe, just maybe, we shall at last come to care for the most important, most challenging, surely the most satisfying of all architectural creations: building cities for people to live in. "

" I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There's only one reason for my whole life, and that's art. Nothing else counts; nothing else gives me pleasure; nothing else gives me satisfaction. "

" 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. "

" Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful. "

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

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

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

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

" Processionalism is primary - how you get from one place to another, the relationships and effects of spaces as you move about in them. That's worked out awfully well in the State Theater. I'm a 'straight-in' man myself; I'm too nervous, I like to know where I am. I also like to know where I'm going. "

" You cannot not know history. "

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

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

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

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

" You're going to change the world? Well, go ahead and try. You'll give it up at a certain point and change yourself instead. "

" To me, the drive for monumentality is as inbred as the desire for food and sex, regardless of how we denigrate it. Monuments differ in different periods. Each age has its own. "

" 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. "

" Architecture is art, nothing else. "

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

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