I left science, then I went into art, but I approach things very analytically. I choose to pursue both art and architecture as completely separate fields rather than merging them.

Art is very tricky because it's what you do for yourself. It's much harder for me to make those works than the monuments or the architecture.

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.

The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.

When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family.