Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Quotes

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Being an architect is like playing piano, you learn to play to admire how well the other guys play piano.

To me, trying to achieve the balance is when you become good: when you have enough technique to be able to play what is that you want, but also when you can refine what you want to communicate to people. As a younger person, it wasn't something I thought about so much.

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet.

Anything is an art if you do it at the level of an art.

Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.

I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman.

That is the way a great master carpenter feels, or an architect or composer or anyone who creates anything - people want to be appreciated for what they have done.

I do not write, I build.

People kind of tend to mystify design and architecture by suggesting you need to train.

The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate.

To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.

I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.

Words make love with one another.

Craft is part of the creative process.

I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art.

I think poetry is as old as language, and both come out of the same thing - an effort to try to express something that is inexpressible.

I was always fascinated by graphic art and typography and architecture. And so I was constantly cutting things and making blocks and making buildings out of shoeboxes.

Look at Bob Dylan: his voice is not a great sound, but it gets the idea across... and that is what's really important.

I don't separate architecture, design, or culture. What's more important is a language of creativity that carries meaning.

I see magic in conversation and words, and music is purely speaking to others, isn't it?

I like the idea that songs can communicate in a way no other media can. That's why I write them.