Quotes from Zaha Hadid

All the privileged can travel, see different worlds, not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.

What's similar between Britain and America is the lack of good-quality civic buildings.

I find industrial cities exciting. I like their toughness.

The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.

Contrary to popular view, I've never been patronized in the Middle East. Men maybe treat women differently, but they do not treat them with disrespect. They don't hate women. It's a very different kind of mentality.

My father was a socialist, so he would have thought that I shouldn't be a dame.

I have always appreciated designers who dare to reinterpret fabrics and proportions, so I follow the Japanese and Belgian designers. The pieces are so animated. When they lie still, they are one thing, but once you stand them up or wear them, they become something else.

I don't think people should do things because you know, 'I am turning this age, I must go have a husband.' If you find somebody and it works out then have kids, it's very nice. But if you don't, you don't.

I think that the training of architects allows you to see what will happen ten years ahead of time, or twenty. It's not guessing, it's not intuitive, it's based on research - and we may be wrong.

Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.

If you think about making a city that is much more porous, many accessible spaces, that is a political position, because you don't fortify, you open it up so that many people can use it.

I'm into fashion because it contains the mood of the day, of the moment - like music, literature, and art.

If I wanted to do clothes or if I wanted to make a building or design a choreography, you are able to do that - they are all under a similar kind of design umbrella.

When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building.

For a woman to go out alone into architecture is still very, very hard. It's still a man's world.

Of course I believe imaginative architecture can make a difference to people's lives, but I wish it was possible to divert some of the effort we put into ambitious museums and galleries into the basic architectural building blocks of society.

There are so many great galleries and museums in London, but they can be very crowded during the day.

I don't particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums.

My generation were all careerists.

What's nice about concrete is that it looks unfinished.

You really have to have a goal. The goal posts might shift, but you should have a goal. Know what it is you want to find out.

Yes, I'm a feminist, because I see all women as smart, gifted and tough.

When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.

When you are overworked and exhausted, there is a sense of kind of delirium and that's why I think architects do all-nighters and they kind of do those deadlines. For four days I remember doing four nights in one row with no sleep. I mean nobody, unless you are crazy, would do that, but you are totally focused on the project.