The idealism [in architecture] is in the formal arrangement, the relationship to the city, the use of materials that are available to me. That's where I say our powers are limited.

A well-designed home has to be very comfortable. I can't stand the aesthetes, the minimal thing. I can't live that way. My home has to be filled with stuff - mostly paintings, sculpture, my fish lamps, cardboard furniture, lots of books.

The message I hope to have sent is just the example of being yourself. I tell this to my students: It's not about copying me or my logic systems. It's about allowing yourself to be yourself.

I don't micromanage the interiors. People ask me to and I say no. I don't want to control everything.

It should begin much earlier with arts education in the American school system, which is sadly deficient.

I would like to make a building as intellectually driven as it is sculptural and as positive as it would be acceptable to hope.

Everybody's an artist. Unfortunately we don't treat them as such.