“We have everywhere an absence of memory. Architects sometimes talk of building with context and continuity in mind, religious leaders call it tradition, social workers say it’s a sense of community, but it is memory we have banished from our cities. We have speed and power, but no place. Travel, but no destination. Convenience, but no ease.”

“I was trying to discover examples of a living restoration, trying to go beyond discussions about correct historic colors, materials, and techniques. I looked to the past for guidance, to find the graces we need to save. I want to be an importer. This is not nostalgia; I am not nostalgic. I am not looking for a way back. "From where will a renewal come to us, to us who have devastated the whole earthly globe?" asked Simone Weil. "Only from the past if we love it."What I am looking for is the trick of having the same ax twice, for a restoration that renews the spirit, for work that transforms the worker. We may talk of saving antique linens, species, or languages; but whatever we are intent on saving, when a restoration succeeds, we rescue ourselves.-- Howard Mansfield, The Same Ax Twice: Restoration and Renewal in a Throwaway Age”

“The [commercial] strip is marketed with the come-on of comfort (the Comfort Inn) and with the promise of a home on the road, a home where nobody knows your name and they're glad to see you as long as you can pay. The strip lives in the contradiction of the name Home Depot—domesticity on a gargantuan scale. Home—"a person's native place," "at ease," "deep; to the heart," says the dictionary, and Depot, "a storehouse or a 'warehouse.'" (Warehouse of the Heart?)”

“My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”

“Good preservation is a life preserver thrown to us in a shipwreck. Good preservation keeps us in touch with the graces of this life. It's bricks and mortar, yes. It's arguments about true colors and authenticity and representation. But true preservation is like the hand that shelters a fire from the wind. It protects the spark of life." -- Howard Mansfield, The Same Ax, Twice”

“Four hundred years is but a moment in 10,000 years. Time is curved, time is braided. Throw out your clocks.”

“Memories are fragile things to hold, but many times, it's what we have.”