220 Quotes by Frank Gehry

You can't ignore history; you can't escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form.

Anybody I talk to agrees that maybe 2 percent of the building environment since the war, we could call architecture.

Democracy is a problem and we don't want to get rid of it.

It should begin much earlier with arts education in the American school system, which is sadly deficient.

I have always thought that L.A. is a motor city that developed linear downtowns.

Your work may be great and not make its way into the big picture... like Van Gogh... so who's to say what's good and bad?

I am obsessed with architecture. It is true, I am restless, trying to find myself as an architect and how best to contribute in this world filled with contradiction, disparity and inequality, even passion and opportunity.

When I was a child I could do math and art, so I had left- and right-brain capabilities. But I've seen my children, who are more right-brained, struggling. My son was told he wouldn't make it to college, but he dogged it through and ended up being accepted by 10 major art schools after the high school advisor said, "Please don't apply. You're going to be disappointed." That kid's an artist now.

I attended a lecture by a gray-haired old man from Finland, who later I discovered was the architect Alvar Aalto. I was very moved. I wasn't interested in architecture, but it was a moving thing I've never forgotten.