A Quote by I. M. Pei

I haven't taken any new projects in the past years - I told myself, if I cannot live long enough to finish it, I don't want it. — © I. M. Pei
I haven't taken any new projects in the past years - I told myself, if I cannot live long enough to finish it, I don't want it.
My projects have typically taken a long time to complete. Buildings might take on average about five to seven years to finish, but in my case it's been longer, because the projects I have accepted within the past 15 years have been mostly government projects, and those involve some politics and funding issues, and approvals and so forth. So they're slower.
Nowadays, we have to deal with so many more factors that weren't there in the past. It's not enough to be a good rider, if you want to finish at the front. The riders have become incredible athletes. In the past, you could manage the race and fight only on the last laps. Now you need to train hard. You cannot allow yourself to go on track without being at 100 percent.
I have already told you Father, more than once: I’m not going to subject myself to a husband chosen for me, I’m not going to bury myself in some planter’s kitchen, and I’m not going to be a servant to some doctor or lawyer in Ilhéus. I want to live my own life. When I finish school at the end of the year, I want to go to work in an office
There appears to exist a greater desire to live long than to live well! Measure by man's desires, he cannot live long enough; measure by his good deeds, and he has not lived long enough; measure by his evil deeds, and he has lived too long.
Why do we protect children from life? It's no wonder that we become afraid to live. We're not told what life really is. We're not told that life is joy and wonder and magic and even rapture, if you can get involved enough. We're not told that life is also pain, misery, despair, unhappiness, and tears. I don't know about you, but I don't want to miss any of it. I want to embrace life, and I want to find out what it's all about. I wouldn't want to go through life without knowing what it is to cry.
Truth be told, of course, what I enjoy most is reinventing myself and doing new projects where I work in new genres, or I get to find what the voice of a particular musical is.
I don't want to be taken to Bhutan and smell the flowers. I want to be told something I couldn't have been told any other way.
The average age (longevity) of a meat eater is 63. I am on the verge of 85 and still work as hard as ever. I have lived quite long enough and am trying to die; but I simply cannot do it. A single beef-steak would finish me; but I cannot bring myself to swallow it. I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism.
I thought: If I was lucky enough to live, I'd change, myself-I realized I could have a new life-new energy, new endurance, and feel better about myself.
I have earned enough money in my life. When I started my career, for about 10 years, I told myself I want to make money. Now, I just want to do different roles.
I was going on years and years of auditions and being told I was too this, too that, not enough of this, not enough of that, to the point where I was so afraid and diluting myself into absolutely nothing...
I always want to live long enough to finish the book I'm working on and see it published. But then I start another book before the previous one is in the stores, so I always have a reason to go on.
Retire from your job but never from meaningful projects. If you want to live a long life, you need eustress, that is, a deep sense of meaning and of contribution to worthy projects and causes, particularly, your intergenerational family.
I've only been to New Zealand once, about 1989. It was incredibly beautiful, kind of like the ideal of where I live in New England - all that and then some - but I can't say I was there long enough to get any very clear idea.
And I'm still alive. That's what I have to focus on. Because I want to live. Even now I can't let myself give up. And that's something I didn't know about myself before - that I have such dogged determination and strength. That I can be completely focused on a goal and work long past what I thought my endurance was, when I have to.
I'd lived in New Jersey for 30 years. That was long enough. It's too crowded up there, and it's a very dangerous place to live. There's a whole lotta crime.
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