Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in [in architecture]. I think appropriateness is more important.

Architecture is a rare collective profession: it's always exercised by groups. There is an essential modesty, which is a complete contradiction to the notion of a star.

If you have this reputation you can sit back and endure it, or you can try to do things with it.

Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things.

Most old cities are now sclerotic machines that dispense known qualities in ever-greater quantities, instead of laboratories of the uncertain. Only the skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a frontier in the sky.

Let's put it this way: One can be happy or unhappy in a building. But some buildings make us more depressed than others.

The acceptance of certain realities doesn't preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.