Peter Eisenman Quotations

If you were a son of mine, I wouldn't want you to be an architect, because it's a tough way to be in the world.

I truly believe that the great heroes that create the history of architecture are people who take risks and write to tell about it.

I would never live in anything I design. Life and art are different. My life is very precious to me - my art is precious to me. I love designing things for other people, but I don't like designing things for myself.

The problem with digital architecture is that an algorithm can produce endless variations, so an architect has many choices.

Conservation destroys the present. If we are only busy preserving the past, we are not living in the present and unable to look forward. I am against conservation. We should let young people move forward, whether we agree with them or not. We should let new things happen.

I don't believe that classical architecture is enough to engage people anymore. They say: 'So what else is new?'

I am immersed in architecture all day, working in my office or teaching.

The guy who sits in front of the TV set with headphones on has lost the capacity to react to the tactile environment.

I'm not a fashion architect. I don't dress in Ralph Lauren and Gucci. When I buy a suit, I buy it at J. Press. I have a blue blazer that I wear 80 percent of the time.

Architects design houses. I live in a home.

The more centralized the power, the less compromises need to be made in architecture.

I don't design houses with the nuclear family idea because I don't believe in it as a concept.

I'm a Larry David fan, right? And it seems to me that Jewish history from the Talmud on has been a self-deprecating, self-critical kind of humor.

My father went to Rutgers, and I grew up in New Jersey, so I'm a great Rutgers fan. I have season tickets.

I don't know how to use appliances. I mean, I use the coffee maker. But that's it.

There's no such thing as an absolute openness. Openness is relative, I think, in all societies.

I didn't know I was Jewish until I encountered anti-Semitism at the age of 10, when my best friend told me I couldn't come to their house because I was a Jew.

I use the NordicTrack every other day for 20 minutes. I don't listen to music or watch TV while I do it. I count to myself. I count to 25; I count to 25 backwards, that sort of thing.

I really don't even think of myself as being Jewish except when I'm in Germany.

I was in Jungian analysis for 20 years, 1976-96.

I am very different as a parent to new kids. My work changed from being rooted in the sky to being rooted in the earth.

In New York, a Jew is a Jew, an Italian is an Italian, a Muslim is a Muslim: Nobody's going out of his way to treat you in a special way.

My wife has her stuff and her taste, and I have my stuff and my taste.

Clearly the anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1930s went overboard and it was clearly a terrible moment in history.

When looking at Germans, I have never felt a sense that they are guilty. I have encountered anti-Semitism in the United States as well.

Stop making me feel good. If you are anti-Semitic, fine. If you don't like me personally, fine. But deal with me as an individual, not as a Jew.

Endings are like, I always say, like a women's pregnancy. When she has a child, she is happy to have the child, but there is a thing called postpartum depression, that is that she is no longer carrying the baby.

The world is too full of information.

You cannot live with guilt.

I am not a finisher, I am a starter. And I am always thinking, what is the next project.

The best clients in the world are the people who cause you to struggle.

Architecture is definitely a political act.

If you want to show a picture, just show it - don't spend too much time arranging it.

The architecture we remember is that which never consoles or comforts us.