In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

Black-and-white always looks modern, whatever that word means.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world – and stop being its apologist.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Frank Lloyd Wright… his things were beautiful but not very functional.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.

If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t be available and would be very expensive. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances, and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers.

The artist in me cries out for design.

Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.

In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.

We no longer think of chairs as technology; we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‚crash‘ when we tried to use them.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

Fashion is made to become unfashionable.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they’re not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

As Bromberger observed, rules are understood to be elements of the computational systems that determine the sound and meaning of the infinite array of expressions of a language; the information so derived is accessed by other systems in language use.

When written in Chinese, the word ‚crisis‘ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

I’ve got a real sense of three-dimensional geometry. I can look at a flat piece of fabric and know that if I put a slit in it and make some fabric travel around a square, then when you lift it up it will drape in a certain way, and I can feel how that will happen.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.

I call architecture frozen music.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.

I have so many designs and video ideas and lyrics in my head, so I always try to be productive.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

The importance of logo into today’s fashion is un! be! Lievable!

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

It’s a rather rude gesture, but at least it’s clear what you mean.

I don’t think of poetry as a ‚rational‘ activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store.

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

I love dresses, and I’ve definitely thought about designing them someday. I just want to make sure that I wait until the time is perfect and I can do it right.

If Everton were playing down the bottom of my garden, I’d draw the curtains.

For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It’s not in happiness. It’s not in impulsive pleasure.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.