Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

It was very unusual to employ prettiness as part of a building.

So what we have tried to do in our later buildings is to try to be completely consistent, as a painter is consistent or as a sculptor is consistent. Architecture also must be very consistent.

I suppose I'm trying to build an architecture that's as timeless as possible, although we're all creatures of our age.

In 1912, when I was working in The Hague, I first saw a drawing by Louis Sullivan of one of his buildings. It interested me.

The building's identity resided in the ornament.

Architecture is art, nothing else.

For decades engineers have stood accused that their buildings do not have any cultural value. We have attempted to liberate engineering of this accusation.

Ultimately, the artistic part of architecture has always interested me.

There are a great many things about architecture that are hidden from the untrained eye.

Architecture, like dress, is an exercise in good manners, and good manners involve the habit of skillful insincerity - the habit of saying "good morning" to those whose mornings you would rather blight, and of passing the butter to those you would rather starve.

Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.

Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory - all these have served, in H. G. Wells's phrase, as Doors in the Wall.

I put it [picture "A still life of a pear" by Edouard Manet] there [on the wall, next to the picture "Jupiter and Thetis" by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.

Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal relation and power which the work evinced in the artist.

Sex, like art, can unsettle a soul, can grind a heart in a mortar. Sex, like literature, can sneak the other within one's wall, even if only for a moment, a moment before one immures oneself again.

Confidence and courage are special skills to the art ... Within the four walls of his study, the artist should be modest, work diligently and conscientiously. While for the public, he'll show himself audacious, yes even into cheerful boldness. And so a new public's darling has arisen.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

PAINT THE WALLS OF your mind With many beautiful pictures.

Every artist I suppose has a sense of what they think has been the importance of their work. But to ask them to define it is not really a fair question. My real answer would be, the answer is on the wall.

The construction of temples of the Ionic order to Juno, Diana, Father Bacchus, and the other gods of that kind, will be in keeping with the middle position which they hold; for the building of such will be an appropriate combination of the severity of the Doric and the delicacy of the Corinthian.

In architecture it isn't enough to just have the right building that works well. It can also be beautiful. It can also be different. It can create surprise. And surprise is the main thing in a work of art. [] I like and respect Brasí­lia very much. It is a simple city, a rational one. I always defend the urban design of Brasí­lia

"Dark Fantasy" was my long, backhanded apology. You know how people give a backhanded compliment? It was a backhanded apology. It was like, all these raps, all these sonic acrobatics. I was like: "Let me show you guys what I can do, and please accept me back. You want to have me on your shelves."

In architecture as in all other operative arts, the end must direct the operation. The end is to build well. Well building has three conditions: Commodity, Firmness and Delight.

What is drawing? How does one get there? It's working one's way through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How can one get through that wall? - since hammering on it doesn't help at all. In my view, one must undermine the wall and grind through it slowly and patiently.