I was sort of open to do anything, I was free.

I have to confess that I'm in a constant state of evolution in terms of the way I feel about it. When I was doing early pieces, I wasn't exactly in love with the idea of building the stuff. I could do it because I had the skills, but I really did it because I couldn't find anyone else to build it for me.

I don't like to make my life like a book.

So if I design it and then go away, it's still living somewhere and it still exists by itself without me.

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

I'm so immersed in my little world that I don't often sit back and pay attention to what's going on around me. It truly stuns me when people recognize me. Obviously, I'm not a film star, but even at a design exhibition or art exhibition, if someone comes up to me, I'm sort of taken aback. I don't think of myself like that. But if I can have an effect on young designers, that's great - particularly young designers coming from Australia. Europeans grew up with design. The rest of us lived on tidbits of information.