If more designers had bad backs, we would have more good chairs.

Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous.

Designers shouldn’t design for museums any more than mummies should die for them.

All our media are given over to things that are better left unsaid.

Attention must be paid’ is the cardinal rule of design discipline, for the designer is above all someone who pays attention to the situation at hand.

A chair is the first thing you need when you don’t really need anything, and is therefore a peculiarly compelling symbol of civilization. For it is civilization, not survival, that requires design.

Because desperate people cling to hope like sailors to their wreaks.

It cost nothing to be loving.

Just go out there and get your heart broken in, so it'll be ready when you really need it.

I'm not trying to be sexy. It's just my way of expressing myself when I move around.

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.

There is iconoclasm in the excessively intellectual, and they delight in destroying their dearest moral or sentimental idols, the better to prove their strength.

To me, only that which makes me wise is worth knowing.

Lord of the Rings was just so much enjoyment. It was over about the space of a year that I was filming. It's one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done, so emotional.

According to [Maxine Hong] Kingston, the prose writer is "a workhorse."

I find that in a novel I can get more of life, perhaps not such intense life, but certainly more of life than in poetry.