“Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.”

Art for art’s sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Each material has its own message.

Space is the breath of art.

Man is a phase of nature, and only as he is related to nature does he matter, does he have any account whatever above the dust.

We have no longer an outside and an inside as two separate things. Now the outside may come inside and the inside may and does go outside. They are of each other. Form and function thus become one in design and execution if the nature of materials and method and purpose are all in unison.

Television is chewing gum for the eyes.

Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

The measure of its nobility and its continuity is its depth of feeling and its sincerity. And if it has that quality, it stands.

Philip Johnson is a highbrow. A highbrow is a man educated beyond his capacity. His house is a box of glass — not shelter. The meaning of the word shelter includes privacy.

Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can’t nail them to a wall.

Give me the luxuries of life and I will gladly do without the necessities.

Youth is a circumstance you can’t do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.

We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us.

Nature is never other than serene even in a thunderstorm.

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.

When my husband Edgar and I were courting, he said he couldn’t wait to have a baby. It was only after we were married that he changed his mind and decided that I should have the baby.

I definitely feel there’s room for improvement.

It doesn’t need to be the same every day, doesn’t need to be the same shower I use, the same restaurant I go to, the same hour I go to sleep. I’ve always been very flexible. I don’t care if I practice at nine in the morning or 10 P.M.

I know how bad Albany is. I know it better than most. I understand why people are angry. I’m angry. The question is going to be, how do you change Albany, what is the plan for change, and then how do you actually get it done?

But I really believe that when you give people authentic identity, which is what Facebook does, and you can be your real self and connect with real people online, things will change.

The only thing in the world you can change is yourself and that makes all the difference in the world.

The fact that we define ourselves by our roles can be an admirable thing – it’s how we build a life and make a living. But it’s also precarious. Roles change. Sometimes overnight.

You can be stubborn and successful or you can give it up a bit and change things around. For me it’s important to have a bit of both.