“Who’s afraid of the big, bad buildings? Everyone, because there are so many things about gigantism that we just don’t know.”

The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet.

There are few violations of this taste, and there is exemplary architectural consistency. Paris has defined the aesthetics of a sophisticated urban culture.

Embellishment is an irresistible and consuming impulse, going back to the beginnings of human history.Probably the strongest motivating force is the simplest: the inability of almost everyone to ever leave well enough alone.

There are two kinds of people in the world – those who have a horror of a vacuum and those with a horror of the things that fill it. Translated into domestic interiors, this means people who live with, and without, clutter.

New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur.

Waiting is a special kind of activity – if activity is the right word for it – because we are held in enforced suspension between people and places, removed from the normal rhythms of our days and lives.

Waiting is a large part of living. Great, passive, negative chunks of our time are consumed by waiting, from birth to death.

Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel.

If the British are a nation of shopkeepers, Americans are a nation of shoppers.

If you will; they are places for doing nothing and they have no life of their own. … their one constant is what might be called a decorative rigor mortis.

In Paris style is everything. That is traditionally understood. Every street, every structure, every shopgirl has style.

. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean.

Only a Californian would have observed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake.

Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all’s right with the world.

It is more important than ever that we receive that extra dimension of dignity or delight and the elevated sense of self that the art of building can provide through the nature of the places where we live and work.

Every generation tailors history to its taste.

I’m an optimistic guy. I’m one of those big dreamers. I’m one of those kids with that annoying imagination.

One thing I’m big on is believing in giving an album time. I’ll say you’ll have to give an album three years before you can call it a classic. If you can’t listen to it three years later then it’s not really a classic.

I’m a big bike fan – my homies got Harleys and all kind of choppers – but to be honest I’m scared to ride motorcycles like that.

I don’t think your ability to fight has anything to do with how big you are. It’s to do with how much anger is in you.

Love is so much bigger than our ignorance.

If I set my mind to something I do it. My biggest wish for all of us is that we are happy, successful, and that we stay true to ourselves.

When you try to do something big its hard to fail completely.

Life is so much bigger, grander, higher, and wider than we allow ourselves to think.