Renzo Quotes & Sayings

I want to take time for myself, because all my life is ta-ta-ta-ta. So I don't want nothing special, just to breathe. I'd like to work maybe a half day and then take my bicycle and go by the riverside. — Renzo Rosso

Sometimes you don't have the time to prepare yourself for looking good in front of the mirror with what you're wearing. And then when you go to work or go out, you don't like it. I spend a lot of time preparing. — Renzo Rosso

When I was 5 years old, we had nothing in the village. One day, in front of my house, some soldiers in a big Cadillac started to do a picnic. I looked at them like they were coming from the moon. I remember they gave me a box of rice pudding - that, for me, was the American Dream. — Renzo Rosso

After all, eyes are the windows to the soul. But Renzo had a bit too much soul in his eye. — Ripley Patton

Once you make a mistake in a fight or competition you never do that again. — Renzo Gracie

Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers's Centre Georges Pompidou of 1971-1977 - the true prototype of the modern museum as popular architectural spectacle - wound up costing so much more than planned that the French government solved the shortfall by cutting support for several regional museums. — Martin Filler

It's not a one time heroic moment but is living each day with bravery. — Renzo Gracie

The more you give, the better you become. — Renzo Gracie

We are all fighting something. — Renzo Gracie

People would see a lot of times fighting as a ugly thing, as a thing that denigrates the human being. In reality, you see fighting on everything ... Everything's fighting. Doesn't matter what it is. You wake up in the morning, to get out of bed is a fight, believe it. So, fighting is actually the best thing a man can have in his soul. — Renzo Gracie

Every society seeks to confine me to the august limits of the permitted and the prohibited. But I do not acknowledge these limits, for nothing is forbidden and all is permitted to those who have the force, and the valor. — Renzo Novatore

If you have total freedom, then you are in trouble. It's much better when you have some obligation, some discipline, some rules. When you have no rules, then you start to build your own rules. — Renzo Piano

There is no better reason in life for you to something than because you love it. — Renzo Gracie

Architecture is an imposed art in some ways, imposed upon the public, so people must be sure about what you're doing. You have to be sure about what you're doing. — Renzo Piano

Musicians of any era - whether it be The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Rage Against the Machine, or, of course, Madonna - will inspire fashion. And we, in turn, will inspire them. — Renzo Rosso

The Diesel team has incredible passion. We work for ourselves and design for ourselves. When I see a new watch in our collection, I go crazy. I want one of everything. — Renzo Rosso

We are combining elements like tuxedos and workwear, for contrast; some looks also are based on 30s-era inspirations. — Renzo Rosso

It was much easier for him now that he was smaller to negotiate his way through his crammed shop but he still tried to swagger past the shelves like he used to in the past. The attempt looked so strange that Scipio started to mimic him behind his back. "What's the silly giggling about?" Barbarossa asked when Prosper and Renzo bust out laughing. — Cornelia Funke

Every year I spend one month just sailing, but I still work when I'm on the boat. You never separate work from leisure. A boat is like a magic world, like a little island. — Renzo Piano

Everything can draw inspiration: a vintage cloth, a book, a street-when I was in Japan, I was deeply inspired by Japanese pharmacies. — Renzo Rosso

As an architect you are a builder. You are of course more than a builder. You need to be a militant, you have to be a poet, you have to be a visionary, you have to be an artist. But certainly you have to be a builder. Everything starts from there. — Renzo Piano

For multiple opponents, I have multiple brothers. — Renzo Gracie

In architecture you should live for 150 years, because you have to learn in the first 75 years. — Renzo Piano

One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again. — Renzo Piano

When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it. — Renzo Piano

London is one of the most civilised places in the world for the procedure of making architecture and urban design. — Renzo Piano

I came to architecture from building. Because my father was a builder, everybody was - and is - a builder in my family. — Renzo Piano

I suppose I should warn you, Padre. In the absence of male supervision, my mother has become a revolutionary." ~Renzo Leoni — Mary Doria Russell

Different times call for different attitudes. But I love your generation because you are so creative and innovative in how you wear things, how you think, how you approach everything. — Renzo Rosso

Touching souls ... The best feeling in the world. — Renzo Gracie

A good friend doesn't try to break up a fight. A good friend comes in with a flying kick. — Renzo Gracie

Even if you don't win you learn. So there's no losing. You win the fight or you learn. — Renzo Gracie

You can't measure a man by his size. You measure him by the fight he has inside. — Renzo Gracie

(The paradox of Italian soccer). As everyone knows, Italian men are the most foppish representatives of their sex on the planet. They smear on substantial quantities of hair care products and expend considerable mental energies color-coordinating socks with belts. Because of their dandyism, the world has Vespa, Prada, and Renzo Piano. With such theological devotion to aesthetic pleasure, it is truly perplexing that their national style of soccer should be so devoid of this quality. — Franklin Foer

I don't remember a single thing in my childhood that was not related in some way to building. — Renzo Piano

In New York, I wear dark denim most of the time. — Renzo Rosso

It's playing with the idea of what musicians wear when they play live, especially focusing on the evolution of what a musician wears when they first start their career, when they are young and wild, to how they dress when they become famous and more polished. — Renzo Rosso

You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony. — Renzo Piano

You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house. — Renzo Piano

No future and no humanity, no communism and no anarchy is worthy of the sacrifice of my life. From the day that I discovered myself, I have considered myself as the supreme PURPOSE. — Renzo Novatore

When I was a student in the '60s, I dreamt of making a house 7 feet by 7 feet, as a dream of freedom, of self-moderation. — Renzo Piano

What is a champion but a guy that didn't quit? ... Life is a continuous experience. You only fail by not learning. — Renzo Gracie

In some way, people believe that if you are permeable, if you are a good listener, you don't have the quality of somebody with a firm attitude. This is what, fundamentally, I got from my mother. — Renzo Piano

We have killed "duty" so that our ardent desire for free brotherhood acquires heroic valor in life. We have killed "pity" because we are barbarians capable of great love. We have killed "altruism" because we are generous egoists. We have killed "philanthropic solidarity" so that the social man unearths his most secret "I" and finds the strength of the "Unique". — Renzo Novatore

If I die tomorrow the world is in great hands. In a much better hands than mine. — Renzo Gracie

I believe in myself over everyone else. There's nothing that walks on two legs that I'm afraid of. — Renzo Gracie

Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don't read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years. — Renzo Piano

I'm tired of advertising! I'm looking for new solutions that make people laugh and amuse. Italian creativity is too narrow, it still hasn't overcome the dichotomy limits between heaven and hell. — Renzo Rosso

There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. It's the art of putting all your energy into one thing; it's the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture. — Renzo Piano

A museum is a place where one should lose one's head. — Renzo Piano

My inspiration came from the land, ... and, of course, from Paul Klee ... and the poetics of his paintings. — Renzo Piano

Family is everything, although I've been fortunate enough to have worked with some of the most amazing minds over the years, including Renzo Piano, John Young, Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour. — Richard Rogers

Light has not just intensity, but also a vibration, which is capable of roughening a smooth material, of giving a three-dimensional quality to a flat surface. — Renzo Piano

Great American art needs the idea of uninterrupted spaces, like a loft, which itself is something very American. — Renzo Piano

The secret of this sport is, while you're the nail, hang in there, let them hit you, until the day you become the hammer, then you smash them back! — Renzo Gracie

When you have new jeans, you don't like the ones you just wore. It's crazy, but that's fashion. — Renzo Rosso

The difference between a builder and an architect is that an architect also cares about desire, about dreams. — Renzo Piano

Cities are beautiful because they are created slowly; they are made by time. A city is born from a tangle of monuments and infrastructures , culture and market, national history and everyday stories. It takes 500 years to create a city, 50 to create a neighborhood. — Renzo Piano

Diesel is the only example of a casualwear or sportswear company that became a luxury brand. — Renzo Rosso

I don't like the idea that the first preparation when you start to design your building has to put your label. I think this is not fair. It's not fair to the building or to the people, to the client, because every building tells a different story. — Renzo Piano

To me, life is memories and experiences. — Renzo Gracie

Enjoying art is a personal matter. It's made up by contemplation, silence, abstraction. — Renzo Piano

A builder is like a little god - somebody who does things, doesn't just draw things. — Renzo Piano

We assumed the customers were smart and that they'll buy what they like, not what the ads tell them to buy. — Renzo Rosso

When a man is not satisfied with a house where he
lives, he becomes an architect — Renzo Piano

Knowing how to do things not just with the head, but with the hands as well: this might seem a programmatic and ideological goal. It is not. It is a way of safeguarding creative freedom. — Renzo Piano

My motto is: walk expropriating and igniting, always leaving behind me howls of moral offenses and smoking trunks of old things. — Renzo Novatore

Most sports require you to master the movements of only your own body to be successful. The combat grappling arts, such as jujitsu, require you to become the master not only of your own movement but also that of your opponent - a far more difficult and complex task. — Renzo Gracie

We will destroy laughing, we will set fires laughing, we will kill laughing ...
and society will fall!! — Renzo Novatore

When you walk 25-30 feet above ground, it is a miracle, because you are still in the city ... but you are flying above the city. You are in the middle of trees, and that is a moment of beauty. — Renzo Piano

Be brave, be bold and above all be honest, some people will hate you and some will love you but they will all see the real you — Renzo Gracie

We inside Diesel are the first consumers of our advertising. We make ad campaigns for our own amusement - that's why they succeed. — Renzo Rosso

That is the idea he is toying with, Renzo says, to write an essay about the things that don't happen, the lives not lived, the wars not fought, the shadow worlds that run parallel to the world we take to be the real world, the not-said and the not-done, the not-remembered. — Paul Auster

My opponent is my teacher, my ego is my enemy. — Renzo Gracie

As an architect, you have to provide a shelter to enjoy art. And you have to love art. It's like when you make a concert hall. You must love music. This is the reason why you make the space, to enjoy music - making a space for art is the same thing. — Renzo Piano

People ask if I hate my opponents; I don't. I love them. They are the ones that actually make me bring the best I have. — Renzo Gracie

A piazza is not a plaza. The plaza is the theme park of the piazza; the plaza is the commercial version. A piazza is an empty space with no function. This is what Europeans understand. — Renzo Piano

The Socialists have found good the equality, and bad the inequality. Good the servants and bad the tyrants. I crossed the threshold of good and evil in order to live my life intensely. I live today and can not await tomorrow. The wait is of peoples and of humanity, so could not be my affair. — Renzo Novatore

Diesel pioneered the idea of luxury denim, and we still drive this market. But it encompasses more: the consumers love the brand, the lifestyle, the mentality of Diesel. — Renzo Rosso

We are like artists by nature, constantly we're trying to add beauty to movements. — Renzo Gracie

As an architect, you cannot be so arrogant as to say you are 100% sure about what you do. — Renzo Piano

...only the one who knows and practices the iconoclastic fury of destruction can possess the joy born of freedom, of that unique freedom fertilized by sorrow. I rise up against the reality of the outer world for the triumph of the reality of my inner world. I reject society for the triumph of the I. I reject the stability of every rule, every custom, every morality, for the affirmation of every willful instinct, all free emotionality, every passion and every fantasy. I mock at every duty and every right so I can sing free will. I scorn the future to suffer and enjoy my good and my bad in the present. I despise humanity because it is not my humanity. I hate tyrants and I detest slaves. I don't want and I don't grant solidarity, because I am convinced that it is a new chain, and because I believe with Ibsen that the one who is most alone is the strongest one. This is my Nihilism. — Renzo Novatore

In life I learned that you should not brag, until you've done it And even worse than that.. Could you do it again?? That's why I'm always humble, humbleness is a brave man's obligation, since he knows what it takes to accomplish a great deed — Renzo Gracie

Architects have to dream. We have to search for our Atlantises, to be explorers, adventurers, and yet to build responsibly and well. — Renzo Piano

A black belt is a white belt who never quits! — Renzo Gracie

Architecture is art. I don't think you should say that too much, but it is art. I mean, architecture is many, many things. Architecture is science, is technology, is geography, is typography, is anthropology, is sociology, is art, is history. You know all this comes together. Architecture is a kind of bouillabaisse, an incredible bouillabaisse. And, by the way, architecture is also a very polluted art in the sense that it's polluted by life, and by the complexity of things. — Renzo Piano

A boxer is like a lion, the greatest predator on land, but you throw him in the shark tank and he's just another meal. — Renzo Gracie

In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything - from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up - grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music. — Renzo Piano

I am continually influenced by the feeling that music culture captured in the late 60s - for my generation, it was a time to rebel, against our parents, against everything. — Renzo Rosso

Jack must have looked confused, and Sienna leaned closer to him as she explained. Her perfume was sharp and floral, and he took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh fragrance after a day on the road smelling dust and tar.
"When we were in high school, Uncle Renzo brought us down here to the pier at Monterey for a birthday dinner, and he spun Georgie a story about his grandmother going to sleep at the table when he was a little boy, and drowning in her chowder."
Jack grinned as Sienna continued the story. "He had her sucked in, hook line and sinker, for the whole night until she started to cry, and then he took pity on her."
Sienna smiled as she looked at Jack. Her long, delicate neck arched gracefully as her head turned slowly from side to side, and Jack got another whiff of her perfume. Her eyes were hooded and Jack sensed she was waiting for something. — Annie Seaton

In fashion, I think I make mistakes every day. — Renzo Rosso

Every time I see open space I see a mat on the floor — Renzo Gracie

The real product at Diesel is satisfaction. My satisfaction at Diesel is being a pioneer. — Renzo Rosso

The harder I train, the luckier I get — Renzo Gracie

Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity. — Renzo Piano

Consumers fall in love with a brand and it's important for a brand to develop and stretch itself to provide for their consumers. I don't suspect that a customer will walk into a store to buy a pair of jeans and end up buying a sofa, but it's about providing loyal consumers with a choice to create a lifestyle. — Renzo Rosso

The day I went to see my father to say I wanted to become an architect, he was a bit surprised, because for him being a builder is much more than being just an architect. He was very angry, and I never thought I could do something else. — Renzo Piano

I think people should try to teach young children that these qualities - stubbornness and a capacity to listen - might look like they are opposites, but they are not. — Renzo Piano

Anarchy is not a social form, but a method of individuation. No society will concede to me more than a limited freedom and a well-being that it grants to each of its members. But I am not content with this and want more. I want all that I have the power to conquer. Every society seeks to confine me to the august limits of the permitted and the prohibited . But I do not acknowledge these limits, for nothing is forbidden and all is permitted to those who have the force and the valor.

Consequently, anarchy, which is the natural liberty of the individual freed from the odious yoke of spiritual and material rulers, is not the construction of a new and suffocating society.' It is a decisive fight against all societies-christian, democratic, socialist, communist, etc., etc. Anarchism is the eternal struggle of a small minority of aristocratic outsiders against all societies which follow one another on the stage of history. — Renzo Novatore

The more I train, the more luckier I become. — Renzo Gracie