Peter York Quotes

I have a very haute couture way of working.

A house is very much like a portrait. I cannot disconnect houses from people. The thought of arrangement, the curves and straight lines. It gives an indication of the character at the heart of it.

Perfection would be something that you see in 'Architectural Digest.'

We've gone from a world in which Starbucks set a cutting-edge standard for mass-market design to a world in which Starbucks establishes the bare minimum. If your establishment can't come up with an original look, customers expect at least some sleek wood fixtures, nicely upholstered chairs, and faux-Murano glass pendant lights.

I love HGTV. I love working on my house and have really been bit by the 'luxury remodeling' bug. 'Million Dollar Rooms,' 'Million Dollar Listing'... any show that can give me design inspiration, I soak it in and try my hand at it. Home Depot is my second home!

I'm not too fond of really cool design. I've got quite kitsch taste really, in things like tableware. I'm quite a sucker for 1930s pressed glass.

Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

Labels don't really impress, it's the uniqueness and risk in decor that inspire.

There's a snobbery at work in architecture. The subject is too often treated as a fine art, delicately wrapped in mumbo-jumbo. In reality, it's an all-embracing discipline taking in science, art, maths, engineering, climate, nature, politics, economics.

If you're a devoted collector of design, you seek out objects you can love to live with but also live in.

The principle of the design - the harmony, rhythm and balance are all the same with interior and fashion design.

People think that I live in a space pod, but it's pretty mid-century modern.

Every home, office, club, yacht, landscape, or piece of furniture I may design will be different from the other. What will be consistent, however, is my own personal sense of style through it all.

Everything I've designed is intended not to match perfectly but to sit together in harmony, to add flair and personality to any room.

People want to create a space that feels like them - one that's deeply rooted in their personality. That's important. Your space is an opportunity to tell your story and showcase your experiences. That's why I think every material - down to your faucet - needs to serve a function and feel personal.

Interior design is a travesty of the architectural process and a frightening condemnation of the credulity, helplessness and gullibility of the most formidable consumers - the rich.

Beauty is my heritage and my core. But my passion is design for the spaces where we live and work.

Nothing is so atrocious as fancy without taste.

Most people in politics draw energy from backslapping and shaking hands and all that. I draw energy from discussing ideas.

All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.

BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

I make all my decisions on intuition. But then, I must know why I made that decision. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.

I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.

Because we [people] have an intellect, part of what we do is try to understand the "intelligent design." Everything we don't know is "intelligent design." Everything we do know is science.