On this simple unit-system [of building blocks] ruled on the low table-top all these forms were combined by the child into imaginative patter. Design was recreation! ...The virtue of all this lay in the awakening of the childmind to rhythmic structure in Nature - giving the child a sense of innate cause-and-effect otherwise far beyond child-comprehension.

All I learned from Eliel Saarinen was how to make out an expense account

I'll bridge these hills with graceful arches

The outside of any building may now come inside and the inside go outside, each seems as part of the other. Continuity, plasticity, and all the new simplicity the imply have at last come home.

The longer I lived, the more beautiful life became - despite my personal tragedies, the fire, despite my third wife and her dreadful taste. My dear Olgivanna, she insisted on replacing the lovely canvas and wooden trusses at Taliesin West with steel supports and pink frosted glass. Well, I was too old to care by then. What I decided early on was this: If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

'Think in simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole to its parts in simplest terms, getting back to first principles.

I never design a building before I've seen the site and met the people who will be using it.