There’s only one reason for my whole life, and that’s art. Nothing else counts; nothing else gives me pleasure; nothing else gives me satisfaction. Philip Johnson Read Quote
To me, the drive for monumentality is as inbred as the desire for food and sex, regardless of how we denigrate it. Monuments differ in different periods. Each age has its own. Philip Johnson Read Quote
Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven’s ‘Eighth’ does? Philip Johnson Read Quote
Concrete you can mold, you can press it into – after all, you haven’t any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You’d be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line – how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were. Philip Johnson Read Quote
How does an artist know when the line that he just painted is good or not good? That’s the catch. De Kooning was the greatest of my contemporaries in art, and he knew when he’d done a good line. When he didn’t, he threw it away. I wish I’d thrown away some of mine. Philip Johnson Read Quote
I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life. Philip Johnson Read Quote