One of my unsung heroes is Erich Mendelsohn. I met him when I was a student and he was a cranky old man and very unpleasant. But if you go to his Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany you see an enormous intellect at work with a language that was personal and new. It has a sense of urban design and of theater and procession I hadn't seen before.

As much as we pretend otherwise, we want what's comfortable, and we're afraid of the different. We're afraid of change.

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

Ninety percent of the buildings we live in and around aren't architecture. No, that's not right - 98 percent.

When I was a child I could do math and art, so I had left- and right-brain capabilities. But I've seen my children, who are more right-brained, struggling. My son was told he wouldn't make it to college, but he dogged it through and ended up being accepted by 10 major art schools after the high school advisor said, "Please don't apply. You're going to be disappointed." That kid's an artist now.

Your best work is your expression of yourself.

I'm preprogrammed emotionally and intellectually not to go down blind alleys. I don't waste the time. I automatically edit out whatever's impractical.