Ben van Berkel quotes

Architecture falls between art and airports. It's pragmatic-it helps you get from point A to point B. But it also works as art. It makes you think twice. It inspires you. It brings you back to yourself.
-- Ben van Berkel

#Art #Fall #Thinking

Ideas can come while reading a good novel.
-- Ben van Berkel

#Reading #Ideas #Novel

My mother took me to Venice one time and showed me all the houses where famous composers used to live. It gave me a fascination for music and the city, but also for architecture. It was a valuable lesson.
-- Ben van Berkel

#Mother #Cities #Venice

I never show the back of my tongue. That is a Dutch expression.
-- Ben van Berkel

#Expression #Dutch #Tongue

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.

Art, however innocent, looks like deceiving.

Has it led you to the conclusion that photography is an art ? Or it is simply a means of recording ? "I'm glad you asked that. I've been wanting to say this for years. Is cooking an art ? Is talking an art ? Is even painting an art ? It is artfulness that makes art, not the medium itself. Of course photography is an art - when it is in the hands of artists."

You've got to stand for something, or you'll fall for anything You've got to be your own man, not a puppet on a string

O you who complain to people about your misfortunes, what good will it do you to complain to creatures? They can bring you neither benefit nor harm. If you rely on them and associate partners with the Lord of the Truth, they will make you distant from Him, cause you to fall into His displeasure.

Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't.

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

Some of my academic friends think Ive fallen from a very special grace.

Because of a friend, life is a little stronger, fuller, more gracious thing for the friend's existence, whether he be near or far. If the friend is close at hand, that is best; but if he is far away he still is there to think of, to wonder about, to hear from, to write to, to share life and experience with, to serve, to honor, to admire, to love.