“It’s the most

violent thing

in my house.”

Throughout my life, the match, this humble, overlooked object, has always amazed me. It’s the most violent thing in my house, this little coffin sitting there in the drawer. It always makes me think: These little sticks with phosphorus and sulfur at the tip can light your stove and illuminate a celebration and also burn down a city. They’re the symbol of everything luminous, and yet they bring us so close to danger. The self-effacing match lights, burns, and then dies a quiet death, reduced to ash, disappearing in its own use. But, for one flicker of a second, it reveals something primordial, something beyond any man-made object.

~ Daniel Libeskind, masterplan architect, World Trade Center, New York, NY