The object of religion is the imagination, that deep and inexhaustible font of our understanding and symbolizing our deepest possibilities.

We not only romanticize the future; we have also made it into a growth industry, a parlor game and a disaster movie all at the same time.

The perception of the horizon is an earthbound event; all horizons disappear in space, and we are left shorn of the sweet roots that have held us to the earth, challenged to imagine what is truly present just before us, a unified and seemingly limitless universe.

We encounter and enter our richest, most humanly defining experiences by way of a tear in the fabric of things, because we are running late, or because we recognize, across a crowded room, a face whose lack of perfection allows a unique light to shine through and to stir us with uncommon wonder.

As I go through life, I can see why my mother directed me that way, or why my father counseled me in that way. But some things you're open to when you're young, and some things you need to find out for yourself. I think that that's pretty universal.

The main thing for me is that anything I design, I try to design it with just a little bit of pizzazz, something that's going to allow the family to stay home and enjoy the space as opposed to necessarily having to always go to a park or something.

Money doesn't make me tick. This definition of success doesn't make me tick. Managing some of the biggest stars in the world doesn't make me tick. Making my family proud makes me tick.

I was born on August 10, 1913, in Lorenzkirch, a small village in Saxony, as the fourth child of Theodor and Elisabeth Paul, nee Ruppel. All in all, we were six children. Both parents were descendants from Lutheran ministers in several generations.