Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.

With the coming of spring, I am calm again.

I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.

Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.

Major sports are major parts of society. It's not anomalous to have people who love sports come from other parts of that society.

Art is not supposed to change the world, to change practical things, but to change perceptions. Art can change the way we see the world. Art can create an analogy.

The beauty of an art project is that you cannot always measure the impact, but one day it can become clear.

The fact that I stay anonymous means I can exhibit wherever I want. No one knows my name, so it's easy for me to travel.

When I was little, I didn't really travel - from the suburbs to Paris was already a journey. I had a foreigner's eye on the city, and I still enjoy that point of view. Then there's the fact that one of the things that touches me most is injustice.

For me, the gallery legitimates the art production and helps build collections. I don't think an artist should do everything by himself forever. I did it for years and then slowly built my circle of trust.

Every gift which is given, even though it be small, is in reality great, if it is given with affection.

Men are the dreams of a shadow.

Once you learn to look at architecture not merely as an art more or less well or more or less badly done, but as a social manifestation, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant.

As an architect, you have to provide a shelter to enjoy art. And you have to love art. It's like when you make a concert hall. You must love music. This is the reason why you make the space, to enjoy music - making a space for art is the same thing.

In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything - from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up - grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music.

I don't want to be romantic, but one of the most important things is to have happy buildings... it's like having a family with a lot of children.

In some way, people believe that if you are permeable, if you are a good listener, you don't have the quality of somebody with a firm attitude. This is what, fundamentally, I got from my mother.

A piazza is not a plaza. The plaza is the theme park of the piazza; the plaza is the commercial version. A piazza is an empty space with no function. This is what Europeans understand.

I don't like the idea that the first preparation when you start to design your building has to put your label. I think this is not fair. It's not fair to the building or to the people, to the client, because every building tells a different story.

When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it.

London is one of the most civilised places in the world for the procedure of making architecture and urban design.

You cannot say, 'Go! Go! Rah! Rah! Good move!' People want some emotion. Chess is an art and not a spectator sport.

I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism.

I think what's important is to give space to the range of human experience.

Don't you know that every perfect life would mean the end of art?

Layer by layer art strips life bare.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.

Tradition demands that we not speak poorly of the dead.

Music is not a profession. Music is a way of life - one that requires much professionalism.

Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.

Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments.

It's funny, I can sit through the worst horror film ever made but even a quite good romantic comedy can drive me nuts.

Selfishness, narcissism, being uncomfortable in your own skin, not feeling connected to the world around you, feeling dislocated from family and youth, having a strange relationship with your childhood - all those things feel really true to me.

Can you design a Rorschach test that's going to make everyone feel something every time - and that looks like a Rorschach test? It's easy to show a picture of a kitten or a car accident. The question is, how abstract can you get and still get the audience to feel something when they don't know what's happening to them?

Christmas for me is all about spending time with my family. I cherish any chance we have to spend all day together making gingerbread houses, baking cookies, or sitting around and watching movies.

The smell of pine needles, spruce and the smell of a Christmas tree - those to me, are the scents of the holidays.

I tend to like to make my statements more in fashion than in beauty, because what I normally respond to is when someone looks really effortless and deconstructed, beauty-wise, and they're fashion is really grand. Someone like Kate Moss is a great example.

I always appreciated the magnitude of my mother's imagination. She always saw beauty in what was broken, and she'd preserve it.

If people could walk around in suits of energy, that would be cool. Other than that, I don't think men should wear spandex.

So, it's cool that, yes, Hal Jordan is a superhero, but my character is a real-world hero in her own life.

Ngila Dixon is such an incredible costume designer. She's such a cool, stylish woman. She has such an understanding of character.

Wanting to be an actor and wanting to be famous are different.

I've been so lucky to work with such great people: people that are such hard workers and have such a respect and appreciation for one another.

I love to have my hair down; I love to have my hair full... there's something romantic about it.

I need good friends who can say, 'I love you to death, but you look terrible in that, and you need to change right now.'

The Green Lantern is a unique superhero because it's not that he's super that is his focus; it's that he's a man. He's very human. That's his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.

I love to photograph the gorgeous landscapes when I travel.

I take a cooking class everywhere I travel. I find it's the best way to get to know a culture.