John Updike Quotes

There are a lot of historical lofts in Houston, and it's amazing for me that a lot of them were built in the 1920s. I love the exposed bricks and the very industrial stuff.

My stepfather is a baron. He has a castle in Belgium that's been in his family for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's not fancy; it's really sort of brimstone and dark. It's got a moat and a drawbridge.

Most cities are eclectic. There's a bit of medieval, Georgian, some Victorian and some 20th century. That's fine. Bath is different because it was built within 100 years or less. It has a homogeneity.

I love the streets of Kolkata, and I admire the old architectural buildings.

After Notre Dame, what is there?

When you are only one vendor, there is a very low rate of innovation. You think the old architecture is just fine, and it can just happily exist for many years.

I know it sounds glamorous, but it was bloody cold growing up in a castle.

For us, when we think about the Middle Ages, it's sort of this rarefied, distant time that we have no connection to, especially if you grew up in America.

Because I live and breathe design every day, sometimes I will come across an idea that is something I want to try. It often comes from an old hotel or an old restaurant, and I will adapt it to be residential.

I'm absolutely loving Turin's old, historical-city vibe, with the narrow, cobbled streets.

The most enjoyable things are the old eighteenth-century terraces that are still standing, that domestic architecture.

I'm more inclined towards old churches and dusty museums.

Architecture is undistinguished, sometimes derelict, but occasionally, as in 'Post and Beam,' there is something arresting in a setting... the building behind the Cathedral.

What a grand, higgledy-piggledy, sensible old place Norwich is!

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.

Seville is a tower full of fine archers.... Under the arch of the sky, across the clear plain, she shoots the constant arrow of her river.

I expected something a little more castle-shaped," said Jamie. Nothing lasts forever," Nick said. "Except demons, of course." Has anyone ever told you that you're a charming conversationalist?" Jamie asked. No," Nick replied honestly. I cannot tell you how much that surprises me," Jamie told him, and Nick gave him a half smile.

Gargoyles were the complement to saints; Leonardo's caricatures were complementary to his untiring search for ideal beauty. And gargoyles were the expression of all the passions, the animal forces, the Caliban gruntings and groanings which are left in human nature when the divine has been poured away. Leonardo was less concerned than his Gothic predecessors with the ethereal parts of our nature, and so his caricatures, in their expression of passionate energy, merge imperceptibly into the heroic.

He was of opinion that what we now vulgarly call the Gothick, ought properly and truly be named Saracenick Architecture refined by the Christians.

Norwich is a very fine city, and the castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic.

I am on the hunt for constructions. I come into a room and find them whitely merging in a corner.

The room within is the great fact about the building.

This wasn't a garden,' said Susan presently. 'It was a castle.

Goresthorpe Grange is a feudal mansion - or so it was termed in the advertisement which originally brought it under my notice. Its right to this adjective had a most remarkable effect upon its price, and the advantages gained may possibly be more sentimental than real. Still, it is soothing to me to know that I have slits in my staircase through which I can discharge arrows; and there is a sense of power in the fact of possessing a complicated apparatus by means of which I am enabled to pour molten lead upon the head of the casual visitor.