It is good to learn from the ancients. I'm a bit of an ancient myself. They had a lot of time to think about architecture and landscape.

Next quotes

• I. M. Pei:

  I liked the America of Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton - it was all a dream, of cour

• I. M. Pei:

  Modern architecture needed to be part of an evolutionary, not a revolutionary, process.

• I. M. Pei:

  The first decent building I did with my own practice was a chapel in Taiwan.

• I. M. Pei:

  Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for histo

• I. M. Pei:

  A lasting architecture has to have roots.

• I. M. Pei:

  I arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even spe

• I. M. Pei:

  I think the artistic side of architecture was natural to me. My mother was an artist and a poet.

• I. M. Pei:

  We had a lot of difficulty in getting the French to accept the pyramid. They thought we were trying

• I. M. Pei:

  I've never left China. My family's been there for 600 years. But my architecture is not consciously

• I. M. Pei:

  I came, I studied architecture in America, so my technical background's completely western. But my