I like to question the minutia, to get to the essence of things. The minutia of life is all about design. It's about the design of how you talk to another human being; it's the design of speech; it's the design of everything we do. We need to be better at listening, and we need to aim more directly at understanding and being understood.

One of the most anxiety-inducing side effects of the information era is the feeling that you have to know it all.

My opening line to my students, and a recurring theme in my classes, was that the big design problem isn't designing a house for your parents or yourself, a museum, or a toaster, or a book, or whatever. The big design problem is designing your life. It's by the design of your life that you create the backboard off which you bounce all your thoughts and ideas and creativity. You have to decide what it is that you want to do each day.

People can be motivated to creativity simply with the instruction to "be creative."

What situations can I create that allow me not to have the disease of familiarity?

Most of us do not even know how to ask a question. Most of us do not see the root of the word 'question' is 'quest'. Most of us don't have a quest in our life.

Everyone spoke of an information overload, but what there was in fact was a non-information overload.