As much as we pretend otherwise, we want what's comfortable, and we're afraid of the different. We're afraid of change.

I don't micromanage the interiors. People ask me to and I say no. I don't want to control everything.

It's a metaphor for what we're being told: "Just stay in the box, kid, don't muddy the water." Parents say it to their kids. Teachers say it. Schools do. And so people become immune to the sameness.

My father was an urchin that lived in Hell's Kitchen. He was part of a family of nine. I mean, there were times that were better and worse, but mostly, by the time we got to L.A., they'd lost whatever they had. And it was a sad time. And both he and I became truck drivers for different companies.

Anybody I talk to agrees that maybe 2 percent of the building environment since the war, we could call architecture.

Generally in our world, whether in architecture or almost anywhere else, we devalue the artist, and schools at whatever level shut people down.

People are searching for something they don't have in their lives. There's an unfulfilled need.