People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.

Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.

What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.