“I am building a stairway to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write.”

People with really weak characters cause an immense amount of suffering in the world. They destroy whole civilisations.

A discipline I have observed is an attitude of love and reverence to people.

It seemed to be a makeshift replacement for love, absenting oneself from stifling atmospheres, because love basically was a torrential storm of feeling; it thrived only in partnership with laughing generosity and truthfulness.

Love is mutually feeding each other, not one living on another like a ghoul.

Poverty has a home in Africalike a quiet second skin.It may be the only place on earth where it is worn with unconscious dignity.

Money will hit me at a big off-period and genius will hit me in starvation, that is, I often get the money when I don’t think I deserve it and have been lolling around for days and days thinking the most abysmal thoughts.

The thing I’d really like to see is the old London Bridge, with all the old buildings around it like Shakespeare’s Globe.

All these buildings are like mountains I would like to climb, but I am forbidden.

The bird building her home on your windowsill has every nest destroyed before. The spider that is delicately weaving a masterpiece has had every single thread broken before. And despite it all, they try again.

I did climb about 80 buildings around the world and I climbed even the five tallest.

When I climb a building, I’ve been there already, and carefully planned how to start the climb as well as how to do it.

In fact, it will be very easy to climb the building because of its shape and architecture.

In the, uh, ’30s and ’40s, the Brill Building was the hub of, uh, musical activity in Tin Pan Alley in New York City.

I think people need housing. And there’s empty buildings, I think people should live in there.