If you see something that you feel is familiar it gives you an important kind of emotional connection.

Doing anything in Japan as a sort of architecture - related project is just fantastic because they do everything so perfectly and so quickly. It's unlike anywhere else in the world.

I was much more interested in making things than in designing them.

I made some salt and pepper shakers a while back and waited three years for them to come.

So if I want to buy a light in a shop and I don't find a light that I like, I think to myself what would I like? What would I like to buy? Then I started to imagine and design it for myself a lot of the time.

One of the great things about design is that it's truly international. No one in the design industry would say, "This country is mine," or "I will make it look this way because it's for an American market and that way for a Chinese market." If you look at all of the Apple products, they are the same everywhere . . . I mean, I can't deny that I love traveling. It's a very healthy thing to be able to appreciate other cultures - or at least witness them firsthand. And all of that goes into helping someone be a good designer, because it's an international business.

Design schools are good, I guess, sometimes I visit schools, but they are very very limiting.