"But the building's identity resided in the ornament."
"Cities are the greatest creations of humanity."
"Color in certain places has the great value of making the outlines and structural planes seem more energetic."
"Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy."
"Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building."
"Even at the United Nations, where legend has it that the building was designed so that there could be no corner offices, the expanse of glass in individual offices is said to be a dead giveaway as to rank. Five windows are excellent, one window not so great."
"Every building is a prototype. No two are alike."
"Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age."
"For many years, I have lived uncomfortably with the belief that most planning and architectural design suffers for lack of real and basic purpose. The ultimate purpose, it seems to me, must be the improvement of mankind."
"Form follows function."
"Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times."
"Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart."
"I am but an architectural composer."
"I believe that the way people live can be directed a little by architecture."
"I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build."
"I don't divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one."
"I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?"
"I have designed the most buildings of any living American architect."
"I love building spaces: architecture, furniture, all of it, probably more than fashion. The development procedure is more tactile. It's about space and form and it's something you can share with other people."
"I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me."
"If I have a style, I am not aware of it."
"If you give people nothingness, they can ponder what can be achieved from that nothingness."
"In any architecture, there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function."
"In Los Angeles, by the time you're 35, you're older than most of the buildings."
"It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; its the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time."
"Less is more."
"Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building."
"Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die."
"My buildings don't speak in words but by means of their own spaciousness."
"My buildings will be my legacy... they will speak for me long after I'm gone."