Philip Johnson Quotes
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I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it; to make something new of it; not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.
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Architecture is art, nothing else.
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The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.
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The people with money to build today are corporations - they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.
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I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?
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I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?
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I'm about four skyscrapers behind.
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To me, the drive for monumentality is as inbred as the desire for food and sex, regardless of how we denigrate it. Monuments differ in different periods. Each age has its own.
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Processionalism is primary - how you get from one place to another, the relationships and effects of spaces as you move about in them. That's worked out awfully well in the State Theater. I'm a 'straight-in' man myself; I'm too nervous, I like to know where I am. I also like to know where I'm going.
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Dullness is the enemy.
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I'm a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner.
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Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice.
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Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.
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Glibness will get your anywhere.
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I like Houston. It's the last great 19th-century city. Houston has a spirit about it that is truly American, an optimism. People there aren't afraid to try something new.
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There's no worse feeling than seeing my buildings and realizing the mistakes.
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I always think of buildings in their settings, but so do other architects.
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There's only one reason for my whole life, and that's art. Nothing else counts; nothing else gives me pleasure; nothing else gives me satisfaction.
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How does an artist know when the line that he just painted is good or not good? That's the catch. De Kooning was the greatest of my contemporaries in art, and he knew when he'd done a good line. When he didn't, he threw it away. I wish I'd thrown away some of mine.
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There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun.