Laib considers the attempt to create beauty the tragic failure of most art. For him, art is an act of participation and sharing – participating in nature and sharing that experience with others.

Klaus Ottman, 'The Solid and the Fluid: Perceiving Laib' in Wolfgang Laib; A Retrospective (American Federation of Arts, 2000) p. 20

–Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a man is fallen in love,––or that he is deeply in love,––or up to the ears in love,––and sometimes even over head and ears in it,––carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:––this is recurring again to Plato's opinion, which, with all his divinityship,––I hold to be damnable and heretical:––and so much for that.

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Penguin Books, 1988) p. 450

Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, That the wisest of us all should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Penguin Books, 1988) p. 369

Inconsistent soul that man is!––languishing under wounds, which he has the power to heal!––his whole life a contradiction to his knowledge!––his reason, that precious gift of God to him––(instead of pouring in oil) serving but to sharpen his sensibilities,––to multiply his pains, and render him more melancholy and uneasy under them!

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Penguin Books, 1988) pp. 211-212

To understand what time is aright, without which we never can comprehend infinity, insomuch as one is a portion of the other,––we ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea it is, we have of duration, so as to give a satisfactory account, how we came by it.––What is that to any body? quoth my uncle Toby. For if you will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind, continued my father, and observe attentively, you will perceive, brother, that whilst you and I are talking together, and thinking and smoaking our pipes: or whilst we receive successively ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist, and so we estimate the existence, or the continuation of the existence of ourselves, or any thing else commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing co-existing with our thinking,––and so according to that preconceived––You puzzle me to death, cried my uncle Toby.
––'Tis owing to this, replied my father, that in our computations of time, we are so used to minutes, hours, weeks, and months,–and of clocks (I wish there was not a clock in the kingdom) to measure out their several portions to us, and to those who belong to us,–that 'twill be well, if in time to come, the succession of our ideas be of any use or service to us at all.

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Penguin Books, 1988) p. 200

Accidents, in the deterministic sense, are not designed, but simply "happen." They are out of control in that their what, where, or when can never be predicted exactly. But they are designed, in the Virilian sense, because the creation of any working system insures their probability, thus their inevitability. In that sense, we had better learn how to live with them, if they are not always to be catastrophic, or to work creatively with them, if anything constructive is to emerge in their aftermath. The first step is to acknowledge that accidents arise spontaneously not from an infinite number of possibilities, but from a limited set of probabilities: a matrix, a trajectory field of unpredictably transforming vectors.

Lebbeus Woods, The Storm and The Fall (Princetion Architectural Press, 2004) pp. 117-119

Premeditation is the enemy of tension. Predictability is the enemy of seeing. Design as a prescriptive method diminishes the tension between ourselves and the objects of our perception, and thus our ability to see them for ourselves. More critically, it diminishes our capacity to perceive what is there but not seen, exemplified by our perception of space itself.

Lebbeus Woods, The Storm and The Fall (Princetion Architectural Press, 2004) pp. 59-61

Space, we must acknowledge, is essentially an intellectual construct. We understand it to be there, even if we experience it as a void, an absence that we cannot see. Space is always the implication of objects. For an object to exist, we think, it needs some kind of space. So, the first space we can imagine is the space occupied by objects. In order to see an object we must be separate from it. A space must exist between us and the object. Therefore, we imagine a space around the object, and also around ourselves, because, at some primary stage in our mental development, we realize that we too are objects. Space is the medium of our relationships with the world and everything in it, but, for all of that, we do not yet experience it in a palpable sense. We must think space into existence.

Lebbeus Woods, The Storm and The Fall (Princetion Architectural Press, 2004) pp. 51-52

In thinking of architecture "at rest," we adopt a position based on stability and predictability. Also, we construct a system of knowledge that privileges these qualities. This underpins our actions and dictates our goals. The unity and symmetry of monumental architecture refers symbolically to a harmonious and balanced universe in which contending forces are reconciled. The traditional role of architecture has been one of reassuring us that things are under our control, that is, stable and static. But it is quite another thing to think of all architecture "in tension."
An architecture in tension suggests a struggling architecture and a humanity with limited control of the forces of nature, and of itself. The forces in such an architecture are activated, not pacified. For the moment, they seem to be held in check, at least to the extent they can be measured. Still they are straining against the materials holding them. Experience teaches that architecture does not create entirely stable or predictable situations. Change is inevitable, as the materials age or tire, or as they are affected by disturbances within or around them. The forces are, in effect, at war with the materials; they want to overcome them; they want to be free of materiality, to flow into the world's vast oceans of energy, from which they will be reborn again and again in continuous cycles of transformation. Such an understanding of architecture conditions our outlook on the world and leads to the construction of a knowledge-system based on concepts of process and transience.

 Lebbeus Woods, The Storm and The Fall (Princetion Architectural Press, 2004) pp. 45-48

If I cannot free myself from the reassurance of the habitual, how can I speak of the experimental, which is nothing without real risk, even loss? If I cannot free myself from obsession with the end-product, how can I advocate the revelations latent in the processes of making things? Without freedom from the tyranny of the object, how can I attain the measure of independence necessary to join with others, who, in the making of things, conquer their existence in the first place by their own efforts? If I cannot free myself, how can I advocate the freedom of others, in whichever terms they might choose?

Lebbeus Woods, The Storm and The Fall (Princetion Architectural Press, 2004) p. 37

What can man do more? that is what seemed to me important to know. Os what man has hitherto said all that he could say? Is there nothing in himself he has overlooked? Can he do nothing but repeat himself? ...And every day there grew stronger in me a confused consciousness of untouched treasures somewhere lying covered up, hidden, smothered by culture and decency and morality.

André Gide, The Immoralist (Penguin Books, 1960) p. 137

The dialectical world is a conflictual one, comprised of different forces contending not for dominance so much as position. In the dialectical relationship, each side needs its opposite – that is the prerequisite for conversation. The aim of contention is not to destroy the opposition, but to find parity with it, to "coexist." In the emerging, globally monological world, the aim is quite the opposite, that is, to destroy opposition and dissention, to remove any impediment to the dominance of one. In the new world order, wars are still fought, but they are wars of eradication. The aim is to smooth the way for a single point of view, a single way of living and thinking. Conflict is seen as an almost biological necessity, not a matter of considered choice.
[...] In the emerging monological culture, one deprived of dialectic and dialogue, dissention does not count. You are either with us or against us. You are either in the game, or you are out.

Lebbeus Woods, The Storm and The Fall (Princetion Architectural Press, 2004) pp. 17-19