I am quite familiar with Dubai and its design scene. I have been a regular visitor for more than 10 years. It is hard to name an area where hospitality, friendship, culture, ambition, and beauty are so highly regarded.

I collect memories. I look for opportunities to try new things, go to new places, and meet new people all the time.

Whatever you put around yourself, you will be the mirror of it. Surround yourself with things you love.

Ambition is a beautiful thing.

That word 'fantasy' - I hardly ever hear it in the world of design. And that's very strange. You should hear it a lot. I think fantasy is a very important value that designers and artists should bring to the world.

I like swimming. I like the beach. I like fast cars. I like speedboats.

Design, by definition, is an eco-friendly activity, as its aim is to create objects which are meaningful and durable. Trends always cost resources, but a true designer creates wares which will remain relevant forever.

I have a long list of how people call me: 'The Prince of Design,' 'Beethoven of Design,' 'the Dutch Prince of Design' and the list goes on and on and on... and also the 'Lady Gaga of Design!' I am fine with it. I think she is an amazing character who has innovated the music scene and is respected by so many people; she is surprising.

Opulence doesn't cost more than boring.

Amsterdam is a breeding ground for new creative pursuits in many areas fueled by a tolerance and openness to ideas unlike any world city I've been to. There is something for everyone here, especially when you dare to go off the beaten path.

My design always has a political agenda. When I borrow components from various cultures and juxtapose them in an object, it is a message that co-existence is indeed possible. Design creates an ideal world where different ideas live close to each other in perfect harmony.

When I had just finished my degree show, I wrote down the 10 companies that I most wanted to work with, and B&B Italia was on the top of the list.

I've turned into something of a health nut.

San Francisco is a lot like Amsterdam - free, open-minded and casual - though I expected better weather.

Amsterdam lives and breathes creativity. One moment you walk into a building from the 17th century, and the next you find yourself in a hub of creative start-up companies.

If I have any basic motivation, it's to inspire people to make their life a masterpiece.

My parents weren't cultured people.

You can go to any second-hand store and get an amazing piece - I have pieces from flea markets at home. You don't need to buy throwaway furniture.

I can't be boring. If people like my designs, then meet me and find out that I'm boring, they won't want my stuff.

To transfer food into a bowl from a pan that you've just cooked in, it's a loss of energy; it's wasteful. People think it's very sophisticated, I don't think it's so smart.

People like their handbag more than their sofa, and I hate it.

Food has always been at the frontier of creativity.

Inspiration has become this word that people tend to talk about as something from the outside. The truth is that... it is inside, like a burning fire: it is the feeling of certainty that your life has a meaning and you'll do something important.

What's special about Amsterdam is that the city is able to connect worlds that are not otherwise connected.

I'm 100 percent sure the love and energy we give to a project will end up inside of it. I think it's important that when we work on something, we do it with positive intentions, because this energy will be sensed in the design.

The 'Dezeen's of this world are extremely inspirational but have no realistic dimension any more.

When I wrote my book about Amsterdam, the main objective was to talk about the city's creativity rather than just its design.

A product can live on one great idea. An interior needs 1,000 great ideas to really live, which makes interior design a whole orchestration of this art of juxtaposition, placement, and combination.

If I look at my own growth, I started in product design. And we grew and created new products, and we were also able to change the idea of design a few times.

Modernism is an outmoded way of thinking about design: it just doesn't reflect the way we live now. It always puts forward this idea that the past is irrelevant to tomorrow - and tomorrow is all that matters. But the past is part of who we are.

An object should elicit desire, and often it happens not because people need it but because they love it.

To me, relaxing doesn't mean that we play ding-dong songs and look at a wall of bamboo. It's just completely unoriginal.

In tech, people want an object for what's inside it, what it does. You need to make a defensive design that people won't walk away from. A chair is aggressive - you want a customer to choose it from many others.

I wear mascara sometimes, a little lip gloss.

So much in design is presented as a big miracle when it's just a repetition of what's been happening for 80 years.

Function is fundamental to design, of course. If something doesn't work, it's a bad product, and I certainly get frustrated by things that aren't functional. But there has to be more than function. A house has to function, but if that's all it does, you don't love it.

A good gift celebrates the relationship between the giver and the receiver. When you open that box, you feel like, 'Wow, you really understood me.' At the same time, you think this gift could come only from that person.

We are buying stuff we know we don't need, and that is a problem we should face in design. It starts with creating an object that transports through time a valuable idea: that it can live forever.

Whether or not you like an object, it's the product of an individual person making decisions about things. That's what makes it interesting.

Designers have been uncreative and very arrogant. They need to listen to people. People have always wanted more exciting, interesting design, but we designers didn't see it.

I have been a designer all my life, and design, for me, is to share love and trust and show the future in a beautiful way. I have worked on this principle all my life.

I like to find areas where design has not yet gone.

My mom and dad had a store, and sometimes people would return broken stuff. I'd take it apart and reassemble it. At 16, I really understood the architecture of things.

I've always liked the idea of making things that last forever, not necessarily in the sense of being unbreakable, but more psychologically permanent. Most people throw stuff away not because it's broken but because their relationship with that object is broken.

When you look at the work you do every day, you do see things. But if you look at the work you did for 25 years, suddenly you start to get a more complete picture.

The works we do in Moooi are very diverse, very eclectic. That's how we like it.

I think architects design outside in. Or they design basically outside. They don't get in the building anymore.

Humor has the tendency to be funny once. If I tell you a joke, we're going to have a big laugh. But the second time I tell the joke, it's going to be a bit strange, and the third time you're going to ask if there's something wrong with me. So I am very cautious with jokes, but there is a lightness in my work.

I like transparency. I love to have views throughout the house.

If you acquire things, you have to let them go.