Oscar Niemeyer Quotes

I've always felt very proud of Wales and being Welsh. People are a bit surprised when I say I'm Welsh. I was born in Wales, went to school in Wales and my mother was Welsh. I'm Welsh. It's my place of birth, my country.

The arts are very alive in Ireland, so that had its influence on me. But I consider myself European, really.

I want my buildings to take root and look as if they've always been there. It isn't about pastiche or adapting what's already there. It's about trying to blend the future and the past.

I think that fashion is industrial, whereas style is ideological. So they're not necessarily connected.

The only legitimate artists in England are the architects.

Fashion is not separate from art. It is inextricably woven into how we open ourselves to the world and articulates the exchanges of power both real and imagined.

Being in a band you can wear whatever you want - it's like an excuse for Halloween every day.

I realized that you cannot think European and want to write or create something African. You have to think African in everything.

When I was designing Mrs. Obama's dress, half of me was saying, 'What would Halston do?' The other half was saying, 'Be who you are.' Halston, me, America, India - it's been such a great combination. This is what makes me who I am, with the clean lines I learned from Halston and complicated Indian over-the-top Bollywood traditions.

Through fashion, it's possible to express deep values of one's creative talent and also the values that are expected of society.

I'm trying to create architecture as landscape. But I'm not copying nature.

Architecture was, or is, a kind of hobby, an inclination I have to fiddling around and building things. Putting up shelves or cupboards, or making tools, or designing houses ... it always has a functional or social motivation. If social changes are in the air, I am gripped immediately by the desire to build, and I think that I accelerate or anticipate changes in my life by doing so, at least in draft. In the case of my house, that was anticipation: in other words, first build, then change one's life.

Style is about the choices you make to create the aspects of civilization that you wish to uphold.

After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.

I didn't go to guitar school and I don't know how to play chords, but I can do it in my own way and I think sometimes that will piss off some guitar players who sit around playing their stuff all day long and then there are people who like that.

My foot is on my native heath, and my name is MacGregor.

When jazz is played in another nation, it is called American. When it is played in another country, it sounds false. Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.

Some of the best work that's happening right now is from architects who have remained in their home countries and who have focused on a local or national identity and the idea of critical regionalism.

I miss being in my home country; here, I'm always a foreigner. America is, of course, built of people who are not from here. But going home, even just landing at Arlanda, the Stockholm airport, I think, "This is where I'm from. These people are my people."

I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered by reinforced concrete... This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge mountains, its old baroque churches, and the beautiful suntanned women.

Norfolk would not be Norfolk without a church tower on the horizon or round a corner up a lane. We cannot spare a single Norfolk church. When a church has been pulled down the country seems empty or is like a necklace with a jewel missing.

I believe that the faith heritage of this country is actually a very important part of America's culture.

I know all the Latin-American rhythms quite well, but I don't play them exactly like they do in their own country - I add my personal touch.

I believe the public schools are the greatest cultural influence in this country.

Ever since high school I've been writing in a spiral notebook, in pencil. Everything looks too polished on a computer when you start writing, and I can't really see it. I feel like the words are much more naked in pencil, on a notebook.