The culture of France is unique because it's a culture that has a high priority on the arts, more than any other place in the world in our time since Greece. So as a practicing artist, if you will, this is home ground. They love us, so music, literature, art continues to be the center.

You never build the perfect building. Only Allah is perfect. Life is such. You make decisions on conclusions, then some guy invents something else and the world changes. That's comforting. There's no one way to use museums, no one way to do art. That also means there is no one way to build museums.

Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. "The client made me do this." "The city made me do this." "Oh, the budget." I don't believe that anymore.

I never said I was opposed to the LEED program or to green building - I'm not.

People ask me if I'm an artist or an architect. But I think they're the same.

Man, there's another freedom out there, and it comes from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the place I'm interested in.

It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it. Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. It can for children - for anyone. It still does for me.