Witold Rybczynski quotes:

The most beautiful house in the world is the one that you build for yourself.

You could walk out of the house, but you always returned home.

While cities are distinguished by their architecture and physical appearance, Bell and de-Shalit make a compelling case that many major world cities--and their inhabitants--also express their own distinctive ethos or values. The Spirit of Cities takes the reader on a wide-ranging and lively personal journey.

Architecture is an applied art, founded not on theories but on practice.

For where else, if not in the home, can we let our imagination wander?

Television watching should more properly be called television staring; it engages eye and ear simultaneously in a relentless and persistent way and leaves no room for daydreaming. This is what makes watching such an inferior form of leisure

The truth is that a nineteenth-century warehouse exhibits greater craft in its construction than all but the most expensive modern buildings.

There are scores of books offering 'solutions' to sprawl. Their authors would do well to read this book.