Peter Zumthor Quotes

Scotland is so gorgeous that every time I'm there, I start to dream of living there. I want to buy one of those whitewashed cottages with the thatch roofs and gaze out at the sea and read my books. I want to be away from the Internet and the news and lawn mowers at 7 A.M. on Sunday mornings.

The only time I can really relax is up a tree or somewhere outside. I love being outside.

For some people, a park is the only place in their entire world where they can see something beautiful.

The scenic ideals that surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss and eternal calmness.

The lake and the mountains have become my landscape, my real world.

The Sanctuary at Two Rivers offers a much needed escape or retreat from the fast paced, modern lifestyle we have all become accustomed to, with its exquisite beauty, serenity, and raw nature. Costa Rica was the perfect place for developing such an important project.

Every time I come home, it is the same great pleasure to lie down in my bed. That's when I think, 'home sweet home.'

People ask me where I go to get away, and I say 'Home.'

Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves.

Sunsets are my escape into the reality I want to continuously live.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a geranium slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in our magnificent National parks — the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc. — Nature's sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world.

Finding a sanctuary, a place apart from time, is not so different from finding a faith.

Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society.

The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.

The great challenge for the garden designer is not to make the garden look natural, but to make the garden so that the people in it will feel natural.

Come to the woods, for here is rest.

Ballet.something pure in this crazy world

It is all very beautiful and magical here - a quality which cannot be described. You have to live it and breathe it, let the sun bake into you.

Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity.

[On gardens:] I think they're sanctuaries for the mind and spirit. ... It's easy to feel wonder-struck in a garden, especially if you cultivate delight.

As to the garden, it seems to me its chief fruit is-blackbirds.

Gardening is the instrument of grace.

Far from the world I walk, and from all care.

It is the place of renewal and of safety, where for a little while there will be no harm or attack and, while every sense is nourished, the soul rests.

In the creation of a garden, the architect invites the partnership of the Kingdom of Nature. In a beautiful garden the majesty of nature is ever present, but it is nature reduced to human proportions and thus transformed into the most efficient haven against the aggressiveness of contemporary life.