I am not any hate-America person. I really came here for positive reasons.

The Japanese are virtuosos. They make just the little accent that makes all the difference. So much there is so beautiful - just a shop window display is a work of art. Just the way they make all kinds of things out of bamboo that are so ingenious. Just the way this little bamboo drain or latch is so beautiful. The masonry around the streams to hold the bank are beautiful - and not all one kind and not just cement.

I think that intelligent people to a great extent are captives of their time or place.

Maybe part of my animus against the English is the way they have always treated the Irish and they way they still think about the Irish.

The first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. This is a lesson no one learns by being told. It is learned from the experience of having other people without ties of kinship or close friendship or formal responsibility to you take a modicum of responsibility for you.

My husband was a hospital architect and he was working on some hospitals in Alberta, and I told him to try to find out what they thought about separatism. He would come back on weekends. He said "well, I think I found out how they feel about separatism. I brought it up at lunch in the cafeteria, and everybody at the table was silent and then somebody said 'Let's change the subject'."

Streets and their sidewalks-the main public places of a city-are its most vital organs.