Buildings Then And Now Quotes & Sayings

Good buildings make and are made by their settings, and they are appropriately different in different locations. Climate, culture, topography and materials have helped create regional architectural languages that seem curiously right for their locations and for all times. — Jaquelin T. Robertson

Come on. I know you're not a stupid man.'
'I'm quite stupid. Ask anyone.'
'Finbar, are there superheroes living among us?'
Finbar snorted with laughter and Kenny started to feel a little thick. 'Superheroes? In tights and capes, flying around? If there were superheroes, Mr. Journalist, don't you think they'd be in New York or somewhere like that? There's not that many tall buildings for Spiderman to swing from in Dublin, you know? He'd have maybe two good swings and then hang there looking disappointed.'
'These people don't wear tights and capes, Finbar.'
'So they're naked superheroes? That's grand for now, but when the good weather is over they're going to regret it.'
'They look like us. They dress like us. But they're not like us. They're different.'
'You,' Finbar said. 'Are sounding very racist right now. — Derek Landy

Mishmar. Your father's hellish prison he cobbled together from the remains of office buildings from Omaha, which he destroyed. The Mishmar that's stuffed to the brink with mutated vampires. That Mishmar." "Yes." "You — Ilona Andrews

It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it's tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world's fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman's shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit's cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black. — Maria Semple

Museum architectural search committees have invariably included the Kimbell in their international scouting tours of exemplary art galleries (a practice pioneered by Velma Kimbell, the founder's widow, in 1964). Those groups no doubt respond to the Kimbell with suitable reverence, but given the buildings they later commissioned, many post-Bilbao museum patrons obviously wanted something quite different. The disparity between Kahn's museums and recent examples of that genre parallels the discrepancy he saw between postwar Modernism and ancient Classicism: "Our stuff looks tinny compared to it." At a time when commercial values are systematically corrupting the museum - one of civilized society's most elevating experiences - the example of Kahn, among the most courageous and successful architectural reformers of all time, seems more relevant and cautionary than ever. — Martin Filler

Every city is a ghost.
New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park. — Libba Bray

It was a stamp. It was a yellowy-green color. It showed - Moist peered - a field of cabbages, with some buildings on the horizon. He sniffed. It smelled of cabbages. Oh, yes. "Printed with cabbage ink and using gum made from broccoli, sir," said Stanley, full of pride. "'A Salute to the Cabbage Industry of the Sto Plains,' sir. I think it might do very well. Cabbages are so popular, sir. You can make so many things out of them!" "Well, I can see that - " "There's cabbage soup, cabbage beer, cabbage fudge, cabbage cake, cream of cabbage - " "Yes, Stanley, I think you - " " - pickled cabbage, cabbage jelly, cabbage salad, boiled cabbage, deep-fried cabbage - " "Yes, but now can - " " - fricassee of cabbage, cabbage chutney, cabbage Surprise, sausages - " "Sausages?" "Filled with cabbage, sir. You can make practically anything with cabbage, sir. Then there's - " "Cabbage stamps," said Moist terminally. — Terry Pratchett

From 50 centuries, we can learn about the close relationship between garden design and urban design, because both arts involve the composition of buildings with paving, landform, water, vegetation and climate. — Tom Turner

People were always saying how ugly Southern California was, especially when they came back from their summer vacations. They said it looked plastic or fake or whatever, and talked about all the cool things they saw in Ohio, where their grandparents lived. Or in Pennsylvania. The wall behind the arcade was made of giant sparkling white bricks, just like all the other buildings connected to it. There was graffiti on it, indecipherable gang writing. It was dark now and getting a little cold and then the super-bright lights they have behind stores to keep bums from sleeping by the dumpsters came on, and I thought, people who don't think Southern California is the most beautiful place in the world are idiots and I hope they choke on their tongues. — John Darnielle

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

Surely God loves to get out of church buildings and go visit people where they hunger for reality. — Dylan Morrison

What it 't to us, if taxes rise or fall,
Thanks to our fortune, we pay none at all.
Let muckworms who in dirty acres deal,
Lament those hardships which we cannot feel,
His grace who smarts, may bellow if he please,
But must I bellow too, who sit at ease?
By custom safe, the poets' numbers flow,
Free as the light and air some years ago.
No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains
To tax our labours, and excise our brains.
Burthens like these with earthly buildings bear,
No tributes laid on castles in the air. — Charles Churchill

I've always thought Blues Point Tower is one of my best buildings and I stand by that. — Harry Seidler

I could not disagree more," said Ganesh, my father giving me a hidden wink. "If we build toward them they'll see it as hostile and we'll be pulled into a confrontation. Now, I agree that we've got to expand - these last few days in Bridewell have clearly shown that. Within a few years Bridewell and the towns against the sea will be at maximum capacity, and then what will we do? We have over ten miles between us and Ainsworth, which I think is a good healthy distance. We can't expand off the cliffs from Lathbury or Turlock, so those are dead ends. Bridewell is stuck in the middle with no place to grow. I think our best option is to start building two-and three-story buildings. Grow up instead of out. We could grow to twice our size if we just abolished the single-level rule. — Patrick Carman

The U.S. stock market now trades inside black boxes, in heavily guarded buildings in New Jersey and Chicago. — Michael Lewis

I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble. — Donna Tartt

And just as your beautiful skyscrapers were destroyed and caused your grief, beautiful buildings and precious homes crumbled over their owners in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq by American weapons ... Americans should feel the pain they have inflicted on other peoples of the world, so as when they suffer, they will find the right solution and the right path. — Saddam Hussein

Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses
those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence. — Richard Ford

There's something about that tunnel that leads to downtown. It's glorious at night. Just glorious. You start on one side of the mountain, and it's dark, and the radio is loud. As you enter the tunnel, the wind gets sucked away, and you squint from the lights overhead. When you adjust to the lights, you can see the other side in the distance just as the sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach. Then, you're in the middle of the tunnel, and everything becomes a calm dream. As you see the opening get closer, you just can't get there fast enough. And finally, just when you think you'll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you. And the radio comes back even louder than you remember it. And the wind is waiting. And you fly out of the tunnel onto the bridge. And there it is. The city. A million lights and buildings and everything seems as exciting as the first time you saw it. It really is a grand entrance. — Stephen Chbosky

The essence will be evident everywhere. In all that the citizens do: in their art, music, food, and their buildings. If the essence of a place nourishes your spirit, then it is a good place to be -Rovender — Tony DiTerlizzi

Chicago has so much excellent architecture that they feel obliged to tear some of it down now and then and erect terrible buildings just to help us all appreciate the good stuff. — Audrey Niffenegger

Both cities had numerous tall buildings, but that was pretty much where their similarities ended. While New York appeared dirty and lived in, Chicago was spotless and trash free, newer maybe. And where New York buzzed with constant energy, Chicago exuded more of a gentle hum. — J. Sterling

Forget land, buildings, or machines-the real source of wealth today is intelligence, applied intelligence. We talk glibly of "intellectual property" without taking on board what it really means. It isn't just patent rights and brand names; it is the brains of the place. — Charles Handy

The demands of the time for objectivity and functionality must be fulfilled. If that clearly happens, then the buildings of our day will convey the greatness of which the age is capable, and only a fool will maintain that they lack it. — Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

But these things now belonged to the past, and he was flying toward the future. As they banked, Dr. Floyd could see below him a maze of buildings, then a great airstrip, then a broad, dead-straight scar across the flat Florida landscape - the multiple rails of a giant launching track. At its end, surrounded by vehicles and gantries, a spaceplane lay gleaming in a pool of light, being prepared for its leap to the stars. In a sudden failure of perspective, brought on by his swift changes of speed and height, it seemed to Floyd that he was looking down on a small silver moth, caught in the beam of a flashlight. — Arthur C. Clarke

The intensity of my grief hits the mountains across Eclipse Sound, and then echoes throughout Arctic. There's nobody around. I can barely see the town below the hill, nestled within the valley of barren tundra, across from the tiny airport, my only access to the south. I'm alone amidst this desolate landscape and there's nowhere to hide. No trees or buildings or distractions. It's just me in the depths of my suffering and all my faults and mistakes of the past are exposed underneath the spotlight of the midnight sun. — Shannon Mullen

How long could we do this before you started bitching?" Simon said as we turned down another street of apartment buildings.
"What?"
"We've been walking for two days now, and you haven't complained once. It's damned annoying, you know."
I looked at him.
"If you don't complain, then I can't complain. Not without sounding like a whiny little snot. — Kelley Armstrong

Oh, pride, pride. I was so wrong. It defeated me. It simply proved insurmountable. There was so much, oh, far too much for me. I mean, there's the weather, there's the water and the land, there are the animals, and the buildings, and the past and the future, there's space, there's history. There's this thread or something caught between my teeth, there's the old woman across the way, did you notice she switched the donkey and the squirrel on her windowsill? And, of course, there's time. And place. And there's you, Mrs. D. I wanted to tell part of the story of part of you. Oh, I'd love to have done that."
"Richard. You wrote a whole book."
"But everything's left out of it, almost everything. And then I just stuck on a shock ending. Oh, now, I'm not looking for sympathy, really. We want so much, don't we?"
"Yes. I suppose we do."
"You kissed me beside a pond."
"Ten thousand years ago."
"It's still happening. — Michael Cunningham

There was a sky somewhere above the tops of the buildings, with stars and a moon and all the things there are in a sky, but they were content to think of the distant street lights as planets and stars. If the lights prevented you from seeing the heavens, then preform a little magic and change reality to fit the need. The street lights were now planets and stars and moon. — Hubert Selby Jr.

How small and neat and comically serious the other men looked, with their grey-flecked crew cuts and their button-down collars and their brisk little hurrying feet! There were endless desperate swarms of them, hurrying through the station and the streets, and an hour from now they would all be still. The waiting mid-town office buildings would swallow them up and contain them, so that to stand in one tower looking out across the canyon to another would be to inspect a great silent insectarium displaying hundreds of tiny pink men in white shirts, forever shifting papers and frowning into telephones, acting out their passionate little dumb show under the supreme indifference of the rolling spring clouds. — Richard Yates

Engineering, which until then had been concerned either with the construction of buildings, bridges, and other structures, or for military purposes arms manufacturing and fortification building, was now expanding to include new applications: machines and engines for mining, metallurgy and agriculture, allowing quick and efficient production. — Oded Kafri

See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum ... and one night, one night they decide they don't like living in an asylum any more. They decide they're going to escape! So, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moon light ... stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend didn't dare make the leap. Y'see ... Y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then, the first guy has an idea ... He says 'Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!' B-but the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says ... He says 'Wh-what do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was half way across! — Alan Moore

just like we did back then. But the upgrades weren't done yet, the builders still needed to expand the trench. So, now they are working on that. A couple of notable villagers moved into town. One was named Peter. He claimed to be a great builder and wants to build amazingly tall buildings. Peter proposed to the mayor that we start building higher structures because it would help save space since our town was growing — Steve The Noob

And slowly the snow began to melt. First, doing a number on children's constructions; Then retreating to the foundations of barns and other buildings. Mangy grass poked through the receding snow. Patches of white were swallowed up in the till of the fields. New shapes emerged. Areas of the forest became INACCESSIBLE now that the snow no longer weighed down the weeds and brier ... Nothing fits together anymore. — Craig Thompson

It was almost as if we'd passed our gaze from the healthy skin of a supermodel to the ragged infections of a burn-victim's corpse. Any industry buildings that had once stood proudly in the city were now hollowed-out skeletons with tents decorating their innards. The tall apartment buildings were burned and then rebuilt into towering layers of jagged, cut metal, brightly colored canvas roofs, solar panels, and graffiti. — Michael-Scott Earle

The silhouettes of Lovat now dominated the skyline. Nine levels stretching skyward. Five hundred meters high at its apex. Each level housing buildings of various sizes sagged on the backs of buildings below. Thousands of sodium lamps twinkled in their recesses.
Lovat was the oldest and largest city on the coast, and it showed its age by the haphazard mess it had become. Roads rose and dipped, elevators and staircases criss-crossed, and floors would end and then begin across the city leaving large empty spaces between levels. — K.M. Alexander

YOU CAN ALWAYS GET THERE FROM HERE A traveler returned to the country from which he had started many years before. When he stepped from the boat, he noticed how different everything was. There were once many buildings, but now there were few and each of them needed repair. In the park where he played as a child, dust-filled shafts of sunlight struck the tawny leaves of trees and withered hedges. Empty trash bags littered the grass. The air was heavy. He sat on one of the benches and explained to the woman next to him that he'd been away a long time, then asked her what season had he come back to. She replied that it was the only one left, the one they all had agreed on. — Mark Strand

I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth ... How far from here was 34th street? ... All those buildings, all smashed - and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless.
But, fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So I've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead. — Richard Feynman

Detroit is a city that really stands out. It's been through a very difficult time. There's been a lot of pain here, and the city, physically, has suffered. You can see it in certain neighborhoods, and there's buildings downtown that have been abandoned. — Michael Imperioli

Towns like Launceston, Longford, Evandale and other current-day hubs of poppy production in north and central Tasmania had been settled by tens of thousands of British and Irish convicts transported here in the early 19th century as a cheap alternative to prisons in the British Isles. They were followed by thousands of so-called free settlers, who built communities with main streets still lined by two- and three-story pink sandstone buildings. — Anonymous

We've taken bold action at home by making historic investments in renewable energy, by putting our people to work increasing efficiency in our homes and buildings, and by pursuing comprehensive legislation to transform to a clean energy economy. — Barack Obama

Terror is now the world narrative, unquestionably. When those two buildings were struck, and when they collapsed, it was, in effect, an extraordinary blow to consciousness, and it changed everything. — Don DeLillo

Extreme weather threatens our energy and electric grid, federal buildings, transportation infrastructure, access to natural resources, public health, our relationships across the globe, and many other aspects of life. — Matt Cartwright

I feel this is very important for us to have serene buildings because our civilization is chaotic as it is, you see; our whole machine age has brought about a chaos that has to be somehow counterbalanced, I think. — Minoru Yamasaki

Nothing requires the architect's care more than the due proportions of buildings. — Vitruvius

When she fell asleep, she dreamed of death
not just for her, not just for her species, but for every living thing she had ever known. The earth was flat and brown, a field of dirt as barren as the moon, a single road stretching in the distance. the last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world. Then they disappeared, and there was nothing left but nothing. — Dan Wells

One cannot completely avoid this landmark character with large buildings such as these. But the city itself is also gigantic. — Rem Koolhaas

Bleak factory buildings and billboard-cluttered avenues look as beautiful, through the camera's eye, as churches and pastoral landscapes. — Susan Sontag

I've just been to Greece to see the buildings there,' said Professor Silenus. 'Did you like them?' 'They are unspeakably ugly. But there were some nice goats. — Evelyn Waugh

Los Angeles is a city of few hard targets. Its iconic buildings are private spaces, mostly residential, visible by invitation only or in the pages of a Taschen book. Its central industry is as mirage-like as the projection of light on a screen. — Dana Goodyear

Places are people as well as rocks, trees and buildings. Places are moments in time. — A.J. Dalton

She could hear wisps of fog brushing against the buildings like wet velvet. — Christopher Moore

It is so different from the United States. It seemed to have a history, and the buildings are years and years and years old. Here in the United States an old building is about 17 (years old), and over there it's from 500 B.C., it's incredible. — Gwyneth Paltrow

I'm trying to discover - invent, I suppose - an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same thing in a contemporary way. I started out trying to create buildings that would sparkle like isolated jewels; now I want them to connect, to form a new kind of landscape, to flow together with contemporary cities and the lives of their peoples. — Zaha Hadid

When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. — Steve Buscemi

I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach? — Philip Johnson

I took the sleeper out of Glasgow, and as the smelly old train bumped out of Central Station and across the Jamaica Street Bridge, I stared out at the orange halogen streetlamps reflected in the black water of the river Clyde. I gazed at the crumbling Victorian buildings that would soon be sandblasted and renovated into yuppie hutches. I watched the revelers and rascals traverse the shiny wet streets. I thought of the thrill and danger of my youth and the fear and frustration of my adult life thus far. I thought of the failure of my marriage and my failures as a man. I saw all this through my reflection in the nighttime window.
Down the tracks I went, hardly aware that I was going further south with every passing second. — Craig Ferguson

We can appreciate but not really understand the medieval town. We cannot comprehend its compactness, the contiguity of all its buildings as a single uninterrupted whole. — Arthur Erickson

Baldwin told the story again and again of standing on Broadway and being told by Delaney to look down. Delaney asked him what he saw, and Baldwin said a puddle. Delaney said, 'Look again,' and then Baldwin saw the reflections of the buildings, distorted and radiant in the oil on the puddle. He taught me to see, Baldwin said, and that 'what one cannot or will not see, says something about you. — Rachel Cohen

When night falls over Washington, D.C., memorials, public buildings, and broad avenues become ethereal shapes in soft light and shadow. Floodlights, piercing the darkness, etch familiar landmarks in silver against a velvet sky. Unsuspected definition of form and contour is revealed. — Volkmar Wentzel

Below us the Thames grew lighter, and all around below were the shadows - the dark shadows of buildings and bridges that formed the base of this dreadful masterpiece. — Ernie Pyle

I'm very interested in buildings that adapt to changes in climatic conditions according to the seasons, buildings capable of responding to our physical and psychological needs in the way that clothing does. We don't turn on the air-conditioning as we walk through the streets in high summer. Instead, we change the character of the clothing by which we are protected. Layering and changeability: this is the key ... — Glenn Murcutt

Boots, bushes, gardens, storefronts, buildings, streets, and stars. Why, she would have had to re-create the globe for them. But the best they got was fish. And the Boy loved them. — Josh Malerman

All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances. — Milarepa