Richard Meier Quotes

One of my favorite colors is no color at all.

I became startled by the extraordinary difference between something whose surface is completely invisible which only makes itself present by virtue of what it reflects, and a window, which doesn't make itself apparent at all, in the ideal case.

Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

It's perfectly legal in this country to change your mind. But when you're a governor, you have to admit it. You can't hide behind parliamentary tricks. That's the difference, and that's the kind of leader we need in the White House. Stop the Washington bull and let's get things done.

Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light: light and shade reveal these forms.

I hope I just continue to be passionate about the roles and to always endeavor to bring clarity and honesty to the table and different ideas.

All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion…What you see is what you see.

Just imagine how boring life would be if we were all the same. My idea of a perfect world is one in which we really appreciated each other's differences: Short, tall; Democrat, Republican; black, white; gay, straight-a world in which all of us are equal, but definitely not the same.

An Englishman will take you into a large room, beautifully proportioned, and will point out to you that it is white- all over white- and somebody will say what exquisite taste. You know in your own mind, in your own soul, that it is not taste at all˘that is the want of taste˘that is mere evasion. English music is white and evades everything.

Obscurity is never a virtue.

Transparency painted in a picture produces its effect in a different way than opaqueness.

I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface.

The idea for a building or an object can come up just as quick, but there is a big difference in process.

The principal function of form is to advance our understanding. It is the organization of a piece which helps the listener to keep the idea in mind, to follow its development, its growth, its elaboration, its fate.

The difference between architecture and building is that the former expresses an idea, while the latter is merely a structure built on economical principles. The value of matter depends solely on its capacities of expressing ideas.

It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' [everything]. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.

White must be the lightest color in a picture.

In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we donot know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.

Going back to that idea that painting sits still and that we give ourselves over to it over time. There's a difference between living with - imagine if this were sitting in your living room for 15 years. You'd probably understand the contours of it.

Let her see me clearly.

There's a difference between feeling like I don't need to explain and deliberately confusing you. If the impression is that I'm deliberately confusing you, that is not what I am trying to do at all.

We understand what the difference is between what we understand and what the community understands about what we're doing because they have supported us long enough for me to stay out here, while other people who are doing other things have not. A lot of people have trouble pinning down what it is we do and how. But we don't have any trouble with that. As long as that's their problem, it's their problem.

Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings.