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" 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. "
Philip Johnson
Improve
Like
Tradition
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" 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? "
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" 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. "
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" There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" Architecture is art, nothing else. "
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" Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful. "
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" I always think of buildings in their settings, but so do other architects. "
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" Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space. "
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" I haven't any wisdom - just a child like everybody else. I'm not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" All architects want to live beyond their deaths. "
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" I'm a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner. "
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" You cannot not know history. "
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" I'm about four skyscrapers behind. "
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" I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life. "
Philip Johnson
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Call
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" There's no worse feeling than seeing my buildings and realizing the mistakes. "
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" The future of architecture is culture. "
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" If architects weren't arrogant, they wouldn't be architects. I don't know a modest good architect. "
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" 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. "
Philip Johnson
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" I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original. "
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" I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach? "
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" The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds. "
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" Don't build a glass house if you're worried about saving money on heating. "
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" Architecture is the art of how to waste space. "
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" 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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" I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people. "
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" 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. "
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