Like men, women have to be diligent and work hard.
— Zaha Hadid
My buildings are not particularly expensive. It is not a tin shed. If you want a tinny car, you pay for that.
People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that's ok.
I don't think I am that tough, actually. Well, tough in the sense that I don't take any rubbish, and that doesn't make me very popular, frankly. I mean, because some people say something to me, and I just tell them off. I mean, why should I put up with it?
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.
There are so many great galleries and museums in London, but they can be very crowded during the day.
Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?
My father was a politician, and a very important politician, and one of the leaders of the Iraqi Democratic Party, who believed in progress.
I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing.
Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious.
Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. Many women now have to work as well as do everything at home and no one can do everything. Society needs to find a way of relieving women.
All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.
I like music. Country, hip-hop, R&B, sometimes classical.
Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It's very tough.
I used to not like being called a 'woman architect': I'm an architect, not just a woman architect. Guys used to tap me on the head and say, 'You are okay for a girl.' But I see the incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it could be done, so I don't mind that at all.
I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven.
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 really love Miami, but I don't think the architecture matches the city. It's a bit too commercial.
When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.
I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper.
Good education is so important. We do need to look at the way people are taught. It not just about qualifications to get a job. It's about being educated.
I think about architecture all the time. That's the problem. But I've always been like that. I dream it sometimes.
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.
I will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East.
Wherever I am in the world, my perfect day begins with waking up and heading to the beach or the pool or somewhere I can be semi-comatose. I just wake up and go to the sun.
Architecture is particularly difficult for women; there's no reason for it to be. I don't want to blame men or society, but I think it was for a long time, the clients were men, the building industry is all male.
I don't particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums.
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.
