I started studying what the nature of a monument is and what a monument should be. And for the World War III memorial I designed a futile, almost terrifying passage that ends nowhere.

Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.

You really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist. I make things.

An artist fights to retain the integrity of a work so that it remains a strong, clear vision. Art is and should be the act of an individual willing to say something new, something not quite familiar.

To fly, we have to have resistance. It's all about turbulence. Reacting to images of wave patterns in fluid motion.

The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. Sometimes I think it's magical.