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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner. "

" I think that the training of architects allows you to see what will happen ten years ahead of time, or twenty. It's not guessing, it's not intuitive, it's based on research - and we may be wrong. "

" Women are always told, 'You're not going to make it, its too difficult, you can't do that, don't enter this competition, you'll never win it,' - they need confidence in themselves and people around them to help them to get on. "

" 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. "

" The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde. "

" In hospital, people should be able to have time to themselves. "

" I don't think I am that tough, actually. Well, tough in the sense that I don't take any rubbish, and that doesn't make me very popular, frankly. I mean, because some people say something to me, and I just tell them off. I mean, why should I put up with it? "

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

" I'm a pushover. I make allowances for people if I like them. "

" I have always appreciated designers who dare to reinterpret fabrics and proportions, so I follow the Japanese and Belgian designers. The pieces are so animated. When they lie still, they are one thing, but once you stand them up or wear them, they become something else. "

" Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious. "

" 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. "

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

" I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing. "

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

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

" Like men, women have to be diligent and work hard. "

" My friendships are very important to me. "

" I loved London. In the 1970s... it was very exciting, really wild. "

" As a woman, I'm expected to want everything to be nice and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality. "

" I think it's good if areas get upgraded and gentrified, as long as the people who always lived there can stay. But they get pushed out to some place. "

" The funkiest housing in Holland is for low-income, and I think that's very nice. "

" 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 will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East. "

" Contrary to popular view, I've never been patronized in the Middle East. Men maybe treat women differently, but they do not treat them with disrespect. They don't hate women. It's a very different kind of mentality. "

" Would they call me a diva if I were a guy? "

" I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper. "

" What's nice about concrete is that it looks unfinished. "