Peter Eisenman Quotes

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

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

#4. 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.

Peter Eisenman

#5. You cannot live with guilt.

Peter Eisenman

#6. 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.

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

#9. The world is too full of information.

Peter Eisenman

#10. 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.

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

#12. 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.

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

#15. 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.

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

#17. 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.

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

#20. Architecture is definitely a political act.

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

#23. 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.

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

#25. Architects design houses. I live in a home.

Peter Eisenman

#26. 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.

Peter Eisenman

#27. 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.

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

#30. 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.

Peter Eisenman

#31. 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.

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

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

Peter Eisenman

#34. 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.

Peter Eisenman