The older I get, the less I negotiate. When you first start out, it's 90 percent negotiation and 10 percent suggestion. When you get to a certain point, those figures reverse.

The older I get, the less I negotiate. When you first start out, it's 90 percent negotiation and 10 percent suggestion. When you get to a certain point, those figures reverse.

When you design someone's house, it's actually painful. I never say, "This house will be a total reflection of you and any defects in it will make you look defective." But people do expect their homes to be reflections of themselves. So what I say is, "Just pretend this is your eighth home. By then you won't care."

I always want to encourage young artists. As the budgets get smaller, that might provide an opening for younger artists and more experimentation. Budgets had gotten quite large for art, as they had for architecture. I'm not going to cut back. The minute someone walks through my door, I go, "That's my thing and you got to let me do it."

I like my clients. All of my clients say, "Peter. You're talented. But, your best virtue is your discretion." They really don't want to be talked about.

I like the fact that I like to think out-of-the-box. Thinking out-of-the-box goes along with dressing out-of-the-box and living out-of-the-box. If you want to come up with a really original design idea and you want to capture a whole new design direction, perhaps the best way to arrive at that is not by acting and thinking and doing like everybody else. That's all.

People's first homes are always disasters. It's like the first time you have sex. It's never as good as later on. It always gets better.