“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. ”

“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 enj...”

“Every year I spend one month just sailing, but I still work when I'm on the boat. You never separate work from leisure. A boat is like a magic world, like a little island.”

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

“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,...”

“I came to architecture from building. Because my father was a builder, everybody was - and is - a builder in my family.”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“Another decent possibility my critics implicitly deny is that of work as a giftThey assumeand this is the orthodox assumption of the industrial economythat the only help worth giving is not given a...”

“Happiness doesn't result from what we get, but from what we give.”

“You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.”

“Mirabelle always ate her lunch on Brighton beach if the weather was in any way passable, but out of sheer principle she never paid tuppence for a chair. We did not win the war to have to pay to sit...”

“When we first get to space, we feel sick. Your body is really confused. You're dizzy. Your lunch is floating around in your belly because you're floating. What you see doesn't match what you feel, ...”

“When I was working on 'Homeland,' there was a consultant who helped me a lot... I went to Washington and met with my consultant there, and he actually organised a lunch with several people from the...”