Make your home as comfortable and attractive as possible and then get on with living. There's more to life than decorating.

So many people arrange furniture in order to see what's going on outside. But why? The view isn't going anywhere.

The essence of interior design will always be about people and how they live.

Too much of what passes for design now is theater. It's one thing to be eccentric- and by the way, most eccentrics tend to be rather well-educated people - and quite another to be a faddist, by which I mean someone who tries to conjure a totally foreign aesthetic in a misplaced environment.

Decorating is not a look, it's a point of view.

Design is coming to grips with one’s real lifestyle, one’s real place in the world. Rooms should not be put together for show but to nourish one’s wellbeing.

When Van Truex defined the difference between designing and decorating, he used the analogy of preparing a roast of beef. Design, he said, is the preparation and cooking; decorating is the final seasoning, the savoring.