Frank Gehry

One of my greatest influences is the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. ”

Architecture is a service business. An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art - or at least people call it that. ”

I think my attitudes about the past are very traditional. You can't ignore history; you can't escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form. ”

A well-designed home has to be very comfortable. I can't stand the aesthetes, the minimal thing. I can't live that way. My home has to be filled with stuff - mostly paintings, sculpture, my fish lamps, cardboard furniture, lots of books. ”

I would like to make a building as intellectually driven as it is sculptural and as positive as it would be acceptable to hope. ”

The best advice I've received is to be yourself. The best artists do that. ”

When I went to Harvard and studied planning, I found I didn't have the skills or the strength to become the kind of public person who could go out and lobby government agencies. ”

Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness. ”

My father was an urchin that lived in Hell's Kitchen. He was part of a family of nine. I mean, there were times that were better and worse, but mostly, by the time we got to L.A., they'd lost whatever they had. And it was a sad time. And both he and I became truck drivers for different companies. ”

And I realized, when I'd come in to the meetings with these corrugated metal and chain link stuff, and people would just look at me like I'd just landed from Mars. But I couldn't do anything else. That was my response to the people and the time. ”