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" I was always unusual-looking; I wouldn't say beautiful. "

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" I don't think people should do things because you know, 'I am turning this age, I must go have a husband.' If you find somebody and it works out then have kids, it's very nice. But if you don't, you don't. "

" I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven. "

" My father was a socialist, so he would have thought that I shouldn't be a dame. "

" Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person. "

" When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building. "

" Obviously for some people there is a big connection between music and the way you can create a space. "

" Education, housing and hospitals are the most important things for society. "

" I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical moments in these places. "

" Men think a woman should not have an opinion. "

" Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. Many women now have to work as well as do everything at home and no one can do everything. Society needs to find a way of relieving women. "

" I can't focus when there's too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, 'Tidy up.' "

" I used to not like being called a 'woman architect': I'm an architect, not just a woman architect. Guys used to tap me on the head and say, 'You are okay for a girl.' But I see the incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it could be done, so I don't mind that at all. "

" Of course, my family helped me, my brothers helped me, but after I set up my own office I had to really help myself. Some people seem to think I had an oil well in my garden! It's a nice idea but not true. "

" Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It's very tough. "

" My father was a politician, and a very important politician, and one of the leaders of the Iraqi Democratic Party, who believed in progress. "

" I don't think that everybody in the planet should have a child. I've never had the desire I should have a kid. "

" In Iraq, many of my female friends were architects and professionals with a lot of power during the 1980s while all the men were at war in Iran. "

" I really believe in the idea of the future. "

" I will never give myself the luxury of thinking, 'I've made it.' "

" Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious. "

" Of course I believe imaginative architecture can make a difference to people's lives, but I wish it was possible to divert some of the effort we put into ambitious museums and galleries into the basic architectural building blocks of society. "

" When you are overworked and exhausted, there is a sense of kind of delirium and that's why I think architects do all-nighters and they kind of do those deadlines. For four days I remember doing four nights in one row with no sleep. I mean nobody, unless you are crazy, would do that, but you are totally focused on the project. "

" Life in the Middle East is quite different from other places. "

" The commission process in America and England is different. In America, they do it through an interview process, and it's really based on whether they like you or not. I mean, it's nothing to do with whether you do the best scheme or the worst scheme. "

" I don't think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. It should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think. "

" I don't particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums. "

" Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time. "

" My generation were all careerists. "

" People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that's ok. "

" I am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it. "