Japan's humid and warm summer climate, as well as frequent earthquakes resulted in lightweight timber buildings raised off the ground that are resistant to earth tremors.
From the early days of European migration to America, in the 17th Century, the prototype of buildings was based on English precedent, even if mostly translated into the locally available material in abundance: timber.
My own interest in basic aspects of electron transfer between metal complexes became active only after I came to the University of Chicago in 1946.
For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.
Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside.
One of my favourite films is called 'Lacombe Lucien,' directed by Louis Malle. The lead character in that film, like the lead characters in many '70s and '80s films, has a moral ambiguity to him.
Billy Konchellah with his World Championship titles, Paul Ereng with his Olympic gold and Wilson Kipketer with his World records are my role models.
I tend to play in a way that feels natural to me. To me that's authentic for myself. I play by where I'm led by some sense of where I feel I'm supposed to be.
St. Petersburg is a wonderful city. You have wonderful parks, birds singing in the trees, manatees in the water, pelicans. So it's like this little paradise on Earth.
Nothing was a style first. Everything started as an idea. A guy did something with an idea. Someone copied him. Some copied all of them and it became trendy and then it became a style.
The New York that Frank Sinatra sang about, people will never know that place. The New Orleans that Louis Armstrong sang about is the New Orleans that's still there - it's preserved.
I settled on a game called I am a contribution. Unlike success and failure, contribution has no other side. It is not arrived at by comparison.
I think only an idiot can be an atheist. We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place.
Knowledge of Nature is an account at bank, where each dividend is added to the principal and the interest is ever compounded; and hence it is that human progress, founded on natural knowledge, advances with ever increasing speed.
All my life I've been surrounded by people who are smarter than I am, but I found I could always keep up by working hard.
It is the inspiration of the Olympic Games that drives people not only to compete but to improve, and to bring lasting spiritual and moral benefits to the athlete and inspiration to those lucky enough to witness the athletic dedication.
I live in a loft in a building I designed, but for my dream house I'd get Frank Gehry, just to see what he'd do.
I think there will be a 200-story skyscraper someday. However, it will require a developer who will not think in conventional terms and for whom economic restraints won't apply.
I was told when I went for a life-insurance exam when I was 18 that I was not likely to live past 50, so I refused to pay the premium.
The quality of the Neues Museum's construction is extraordinary even by German standards, and people can smell that quality. The concept would not have been so convincing without it.
I went to college, grad school. I got an M.B.A., had a really cush corporate job. But I was just bored stiff. I didn't fit that mold.
