I am a poor man and of little worth who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.
The challenge is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.
Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet but soon will and will change everything for everybody and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible never the impossible.
The finest works of art are precious among other reasons because they make it possible for us to know if only imperfectly and for a little while what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.
In general the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.
You look at the steamboat the railroad the car the airplane - not all of these were invented in the Anglo-American world but they were popularized and extended by it. They were made possible by the financial architecture the capital intensive operations invented and developed by the Anglo-Americans.
I'm often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world. That's impossible. And today nobody expects architects to have these grand visions any more.
In addressing a task one almost always has several possible options sometimes only a few and they may all be practical and functional. But they lack the aesthetic aspect that raises it to architecture.
It's my goal to make a building as immaterial as possible. Architecture is a very material thing. It takes a lot of resources so why not eliminate what you don't need as long as you're able to achieve the same result?
I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s and into my 30s I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.