Zaha Hadid Quotes - Page 4

Wherever I am in the world, my perfect day begins with waking up and heading to the beach or the pool or somewhere I can be semi-comatose. I just wake up and go to the sun.

No. I don't have the patience, and I'm not very tactful. People say I can be frightening.

I made a decision when I was in school that I'd have a lot of male friends.

I will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East.

People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner.

In terms of form, all the projects interest me equally, although there are obviously large differences according to the scale and process of each project.

The paintings have only ever been ways of exploring architecture. I don't see them as art.

I find industrial cities exciting. I like their toughness.

I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven.

When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building.

The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.

I really love Miami, but I don't think the architecture matches the city. It's a bit too commercial.

I am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it.

The commission process in America and England is different. In America, they do it through an interview process, and it's really based on whether they like you or not. I mean, it's nothing to do with whether you do the best scheme or the worst scheme.

What's similar between Britain and America is the lack of good-quality civic buildings.

I can't focus when there's too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, 'Tidy up.'

When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.

There are so many great galleries and museums in London, but they can be very crowded during the day.

I loved London. In the 1970s... it was very exciting, really wild.

My father was a politician, and a very important politician, and one of the leaders of the Iraqi Democratic Party, who believed in progress.

It's not my duty as an architect to look at it.

In Iraq, many of my female friends were architects and professionals with a lot of power during the 1980s while all the men were at war in Iran.

If I'm in london it can be different than if I'm somewhere else.

Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time.

I like music. Country, hip-hop, R&B, sometimes classical.