Look at nature - look at birds, look at fish. Things that look good, work good. People don't get the message of ergonomics.

It is absolutely the central theme in my design philosophy - that life is erotic, period. The female body is one of the most extraordinary designs ever done in this universe.

China came from a communist dictatorship of the ugliest kind to become a country which today has a smiling population. Things are getting better and better every day - you can feel it, you can touch it over here!

I learned to ask myself questions like: Why is something made the way it is? Why does a motorcar look like it does? Is it right or wrong? What is an airplane? Why is it shaped like that? Then, later, I became a diver and studied subaquatic life and the streamlining of sharks and manta rays. Any fish is superior to the shapes we humans have invented - and unchanged for 250 million years, imagine!

You see, if you are 30 years ahead of your time, you will always have difficulty speaking with the bosses in the industry. They are too conservative.

The world is super-stupid. You have by far the best designers in America! And you do the most stupid cars in the world! They put billions into their stupid designs for General Motors, Chrysler, Buick, or who knows what. The designers in America must be frustrated. I am not frustrated, because I am not a designer - I am a philosopher, and all philosophers have said for ages that the world around them is stupid.

I'm a very peaceful man. In the '80s, I was the chief designer at Thyssen, one of the biggest companies in Germany. But when they asked me to design armored vehicles, tanks, and submarines, I quit overnight.