I have set a standard, and I'm going to stick to the standard. I may have been able to grow faster and maybe my business could have been bigger, but because I really feel very serious about my subject, I really want to be hands-on.

Life is too complicated not to be orderly.

Write the book you'd want to read.

If you learn something new every day, you can teach something new every day

I really do have rules for running and managing a business that have never been formalized before.

I have a lot of energy. I have a great desire to absorb information. I’m not a sponge exactly, but I find that something I look at — just walking around Williamsburg, for example — is a great opportunity for ideas. I’ve been here before, I’ve seen things before, but now my eye gets keener and keener. So I can pick up little things: just the pattern of a brick walk, or the way they’ve attached a light to a house.

All I really want is a three-room house. The home I have designed at my new farm in Bedford, New York, is a three-room house: bedroom on top, living room in the middle, and kitchen on the ground.