When you're a kid with artistic yearnings brought up in the Bronx, you don't get fed up too easily.

I don't get to sleep when I'm in New York. Really. I'm living on adrenaline.

Don't look at the superficial success, at the short-term success. Look at the deep spiritual questions that architecture has to answer. Who do you build for? Where? What should you build?

It's about how to bring together the seemingly contradictory aspects of the memorial, which is about a tragedy and how it changed the world, but also about creating a vital and beautiful city of the 21st century.

There are more people living in Lower Manhattan now than before the terrorist attacks. That's faith for you. There's such a strong spirit here.

And, yes, I love the process of building.

Young people have the advantage because they have their whole lives open to be astonished.