Life is a big collaboration - and when you're tackling something that is painful and troubling and is causing you such desperate grief that you think life's not worth living - you need to reach out. To people who will reach back.

I guess the most famous person I was so extremely exhilarated by being with - and actually sat next to her at a luncheon at the White House - was Mrs. Obama.

I don't believe in the scraping of stuff. Take the existing condition, offer up a diagnosis for what's wrong, and a prescription for making it work.

Life is a big collaboration - and when you're tackling something that is painful and troubling and is causing you such desperate grief that you think life's not worth living - you need to reach out. To people who will reach back.

You have no control over other people's taste, so focus on staying true to your own.

I have a very Socratic approach - I pummel the designers with questions, so when I get them to step back from the work and look at it with me, they'll eventually see what I see, coming to it fresh and unencumbered. That's always very gratifying because they feel a responsibility and an ownership of a solution.

It was very challenging to mentor the mentors, and yes, you do see more sides of my personality.