"Rules?.. Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earh are alike. No two buildings have he same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A buildig is alive, like a man. Its intregity is to follow its own truth, its own single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it..."

... The Parthenon did not serve the same purpose is its wooden anscestor. An airline terminal does not serve the same purpose as the Parthenon. Every form has its own meaning. Everyman creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important--what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right--so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic--and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else?"

-Howard Roark, the Fountainhead