Daniel Libeskind Quotes

I'm not Candide, nor Dr Pangloss, but we know that faith moves mountains.

And it is very moving because one has to see the site not as just another site of development but it is a very special site. It is a site that souls and hearts of all Americans.

And you have to remember that I came to America as an immigrant. You know, on a ship, through the Statue of Liberty. And I saw that skyline, not just as a representation of steel and concrete and glass, but as really the substance of the American Dream.

And then, build a bustling wonderful city of the 21st century, with a restoration of a spectacular skyline, which Manhattan, of course, needs. So, that is really the design as a whole.

Larry wanted us to reposition the tower. We wouldn't, and won't. He's been holding back our fees. We want to get paid. And that's it. It'll get solved and we'll carry on with planning Ground Zero.

Call Berlin. Drop everything we're doing. I have a complete vision of what should be.

We often judge cities by great public buildings. But we admire great cities because people live there in a beautiful way. You have to think about how each person will live there; you can't just think about abstract ideas.

Buffer between commercial, memorial and retail space.

It's a fantastic responsibility and a wonderful moment.

Winning a competition in architecture is a ticket to oblivion. It's just an idea. Ninety-nine per cent never get built.

Only through acknowledgment of the erasure and void of Jewish life can the history of Berlin and Europe have a human future.

I think there is a new awareness in this 21st century that design is as important to where and how we live as it is for museums, concert halls and civic buildings.

What is a habit? It's just a shackle for ourselves.

I don't get to sleep when I'm in New York. Really. I'm living on adrenaline.

I studied architecture in New York. So, really I was very moved, like everyone else, to try to contribute something that has that resonance and profundity of it means to all of us.

There will be a competition for the memorial. And then it can be developed with trees, with planting. It can become a very beautiful place protected from the streets, because it is below. And it can be something very moving and very private.

We all came to see that site. We all walked around it. It is already sacred.

I think to be creative you have to resist taking the easy path.

It's a project that touched me as an immigrant and as a New Yorker.

When you're a kid with artistic yearnings brought up in the Bronx, you don't get fed up too easily.

To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it.

The foreign press seems obsessed with the Freedom Tower, as if it was the only thing going on here. In fact, we're trying to keep a huge juggling act in balance, with the tower as just one of the many balls in play.

Life it is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics, it's about experience, it's about participation, it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious.