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Most buildings, whether they're Gothic cathedrals or Romanesque ones, were high tech for their time.

The family I'm from, well, no one had their name on big buildings. My family were builders of a different kind. Builders in the way most American families are. They used whatever tools they had - whatever God gave them - and whatever life in America provided - and built better lives and better futures for their kids.

There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way.

The greatest generation was formed first by the Great Depression. They shared everything - meals, jobs, clothing.

Not even the most secular among us can fail to be uplifted by Christianity's architectural legacy - the great cathedrals. These immense and glorious buildings were erected in an era of constricted horizons, both in time and in space.

It is not architectural achievement that makes the structures of earlier times seem to us so full of significance but the circumstance that antique temples, Roman basilicas, and even the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are not the works of single personalities but creations of entire epochs.

The future of architecture is culture.

Architecture was pretty much the sexiest thing to be doing from 1700-1800.

All through history, a nation or a civilization's enduring glory is articulated by its mega constructions - the pyramids, the lofty cathedrals of the Christian world.

Architecture has always been a very idealistic profession. It's about making the world a better place, and it works over the generations because people go on vacation and they look for it.