You need a prince to make a town in an intellectual sense. Developers want to make money. If they cared about architecture, they'd become architects. I've had so many projects that never came off because they had no sponsor, and not because they were utopian. I just want to build a town that's normal.

In fact, the public will accept any city plan and skyline provided that its architecture is traditional.

Cities and landscapes are illustrations of our spiritual and material worth. They not only express our values but give them a tangible reality. They determine the way in which we use or squander our energy, time, and land resources.

As is the case with all good things in life - love, good manners, language, cooking - personal creativity is required only rarely.

For architecture, nature provides only indications and analogies, not models to imitate.

If a dictator takes up my ideas, the resulting town will survive the political system that commissioned it and stand as a social good. Besides, modernism rather than classicism has dominated the architecture of totalitarian regimes of both the left and right.

Authentic architecture is not the incarnation of the spirit of the age but of the spirit, full stop.