Top 22 Quotes by I. M. Pei

I'd been going to the Louvre since 1951. I thought I knew Paris and the French, but I didn't really. You know how easy it is to make friends when you are traveling. People are curious about you, you are curious about them. But you never really make friends that way. After the Louvre, I discovered that I have friends now because I have enemies.

I arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even speak English. I could read a little, perhaps write a little, but that was all. It was a 17-day journey, and I learnt to speak English from the stewards.

One thing I learn - I've been in practice now for half a century or more, and the most important ingredient for an architect to do a good building is to have a good client. I think a client counts for as much as fifty per cent.

In northern architecture - the cathedrals of Europe and all the little churches - the details, the carving of stone, become necessary because the light is not there to help you very much. You have to enrich surfaces. The desert reduces form to its simplest nature. There is no need for gargoyles or flying buttresses in the desert.