“We are living in a very complex society. It puts me in a complex frame of thinking.”

“Everyone wants an iPhone, but it would be impossible to design an iPhone in China because it's not a product; it's an understanding of human nature.”

“The 'Bird's Nest' National Stadium, which I helped to conceive, is designed to embody the Olympic spirit of 'fair competition.' It tells people that freedom is possible but needs fairness, courage ...”

“A nation that has no music and no fairytales is a tragedy.”

“Police in China can do whatever they want; after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don't have to obey their own laws. In a society like this there is no negotiation, no d...”

“To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It's a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions,...”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”

“You should not think on a small scale”

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”

“It doesn't sound that cool to say it, but I still get nervous for any show. But it's different degrees - playing a small basement of a club versus playing a festival like Firefly or Bonnaroo. The f...”

“The problem of society is that they use a single word to describe you.”

“Beastliness means taking that is unrightful [of someones else right], eating that is unrightful, thinking of accumulating things which is unrightful [not of ones own right]. There is no problem in ...”

“The only problem is time.”