“I visited Notre Dame at 11 in the morning and the sun was entering thr...” — Santiago Calatrava Quote

“I visited Notre Dame at 11 in the morning and the sun was entering through the south rose window, it was so impressive. This is when architecture can be king and give people sensations, like music.”

“Something that's very important is to preserve the sense of surprise, the sense of discovery. The eye of the person you are talking to, your shadow on the ground. It's important not to get suffocated by all the things in life and lose that sense of surprise.”

“What architecture does is what a coat does for our body. It wraps us.”

“I'm often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world. That's impossible. And today nobody expects architects to have these grand visions any more.”

“I loathe when architects only analyze architecture in intellectual, nonvisual ways. I really love direct response, and that's very pop. I don't want to discuss abstract transparencies with a bunch of kooks.”

“Architecture has curled up in a ball and it's about itself. It has found itself either as a freakshow, where you're not sure if it's good or bad but at least it's interesting, or at the behest of forces of commerce.”