Frank Gehry Quotes

My best business decision was to be independent as a musician and artist. My worst was compromising on certain aspects of a deal for the sake of other members of my group when I shouldn't have, because I was right in the end.

All clients think that they are architects.

The traditional notion of an architect having a vision of a building and then drawing it either on paper or on a computer and then constructing it isn't really how architecture works, and in reality, the computer has a lot of influence on design.

I have my own office, and I'm there during the evenings and weekends. But during the week, I'm sitting in the middle of my studio, talking with everybody, deciding together every detail, every pallette, every yarn, every colour.

I think a lot of people have the Frank Lloyd Wright model in their brains. The architect comes in with this act of creation and lays it down, and that's it. But that's not me.

Who I am as an architect and the history of my work - that's clear to anybody who hires me. But I come in literally with nothing in my brain about what the building will look like.

People outside the profession of architecture perhaps often lack the understanding of how their physical environment comes into being. What are the processes, the concerns and considerations? What are the parameters that shape the world around them?

Architects like to work in a problematic environment.

I'm very lucky that I'm not a photographer for hire - people hire me for me. I go into every commercial work with an art focus, with that lens; every brand I've worked for just lets me do whatever I want to do. I have full creative freedom.

I'm looking for a living wage and to continue my work. The frustration comes from when I can't do the things that matter most to me. It's when someone comes and says, 'I will finance your movie if you cast so and so.'

I think my best skill as an architect is the achievement of hand-to-eye coordination. I am able to transfer a sketch into a model into the building.

It is therefore indisputable that the limbs of architecture are derived from the limbs of man.

If you are a designer, sometimes it is better not to delegate, because someone pays money for something that you designed, so it should be exactly the way you want it, exactly the way you would have chosen it. People call me a control freak, and I say, "Well, my name is on the shoe." It means the heel needs to be the way I want it and not the way somebody else wants it, and the toe needs to be exactly the way I want it, and the fabric and the material have to be exactly the way I want it. It is not a democracy - it is a dictatorship.

I always try to choose material that I would want to go and see. I don't choose movies anymore to be in that other people wouldn't want to see.

New media has made it possible for filmmakers like me to get their message out. No big Hollywood studios are needed anymore to make and release a film. More and more people are watching movies and television online than going to the movie theater because of costs. This freedom gives me the opportunity to create the film I want to be seen and heard.

I don't think you should sit around and wait for people to give you an opportunity to express yourself or do your work, or whatever. Actors have to be producers and writers have to be producers.

It's not the norm when creators have any protections with regards to creative control. And so it took some time, I think, for the strip to gain enough popularity where I had enough leverage to come in and say, "It has to be done in a certain way or it's not going to be done at all," and then have people willing to put up with that who were ultimately paying for it. You know, for them to be willing to kind of concede those kind of things. It just takes time, you know?

Art is not a democracy. People don't get to vote on how it ends.

We don't do focus groups - that is the job of the designer.

Sometimes people think of actors as marionettes - everybody else makes the decisions for us - and, you know, really, making this decision [of which roles to take] is the only thing you lay claim to.

Hollywood always had a streak of the totalitarian in just about everything it did. The old moguls were essentially hard-fisted authoritarians who had created a system of linked dictatorships to control the creative people. We were supposed to be the children; mad, tempestuous, brilliant, talented, not terribly smart children.

You've got to run your career. What happens is a lot of times artists have this talent and they're just looking for somebody to take it and do something with it. And you have to be the creative force.

Generally you don't initiate the projects - they're designed and you're inserted. Your material is edited by somebody. You feel a lack of power over your work.

I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays. It's more that I wanted to see what it would be like if I didn't have to collaborate with anybody, to have a sense of purity of the thing from beginning to end. I liked doing it. It's really different from writing. Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.

I don't want to move over to Beverly Hills. My goal is to make the movies I want to make and support the people I want to support. That's it.