Annabelle Selldorf Quotes

We are speeding up our lives and working harder in a futile attempt to buy the time to slow down and enjoy it.

The way we live is changing. Each year, our free time shrinks a little more as computers clamor for an increasing percentage of our attention.

A fancy watch, it's completely unnecessary. I just need a watch to tell the right time.

I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.

Speed is one of the great curses of modern civilization, obsession with speed leads to quantitative approach; we come to believe that more is better. This is very materialistic, we have to realize that it is the quality of life, quality of relationships, quality of food, medicine, education and everything else which matters.

I'm really proud of myself because I've pared my beauty regimen down to a cream blush and berry-tinted lip balm, which has saved me so much time.

Don't keep excessive amounts of anything. Those glass vases that come from florists. Those ketchup packets that come with take-out food. A house with two adults probably doesn't need fifteen mismatched souvenir coffee cups.

I'm a practitioner of elegant frugality. I don't feel comfortable telling other people what to do, so I just try and lead by example.

I was brought up to reuse things.

I always said if I could figure out a way to grow Kleenex and toilet paper on trees, we could pull the plug on society.

We should work for simple, good, undecorated things, but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street.

I can do without a television or a telephone, I think.

My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.

All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.

My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry.

More is not better. Better is better. You don't need a bigger house; you need a different floor plan. You don't need more stuff; you need stuff you'll actually use.

A computer shall not waste your time or require you to do more work than is strictly necessary.

My environment is important to me. I'd rather give up other things in my life - I might not take vacations or spend a lot of money on clothes - so that I can live in a home I feel really good about.

You can only realize change if you live simply. Once people want enormous excess, you can hardly do social change.

'In Praise of Slowness' chronicles the global trend towards deceleration that has come to be known as the Slow Movement. Don't worry, though: it is not a Luddite rant. I love speed. Going fast can be fun, liberating and productive. The problem is that our hunger for speed, for cramming more and more into less and less time, has gone too far.

My mother was my biggest role model. She taught me to hate waste. We never wasted anything.

I don't know about you, but all this modern technology that's supposed to save us time and effort has actually ended up making things more complicated in my life, eating up extra time.

Individually, people are finding that a simpler lifestyle provides greater satisfaction than relentless pursuit of materialism.