Frasi di Philippe Starck

“Un giorno senza sesso, anche se poi recuperi alla sera, per me è un giorno buttato. Non riesco a pensare, a creare, a stare in contatto con mia moglie e con il mondo senza aver fatto sesso al mattino.”

“Amare e farsi amare è un'attività complicata, soprattutto quando hai un brutto carattere, quando sei un po' vecchio, un po' grasso…”

“Il barometro del mio amore è il sesso: non posso concepire un giorno senza farlo.”

“Io vivo solo per amare qualcuno. Per me l'amore è azione, lavoro a tempo pieno. Occupa il mio cervello e la mia esistenza al 98 per cento.”

“Tutto ha un ciclo vitale, anche le civiltà. La mia generazione si è spesa per trovare risposte, dall'energia all'eco-democrazia, e io ho partecipato. Il risultato non è incoraggiante: noccioline. L'unica soluzione è una temporanea e positiva decrescita. Purtroppo non ce l'abbiamo nel DNA, perché la nostra società è basata sul progresso. Ma per i giovani quel che sembra un disastro è un Eldorado: tutto deve essere reimpostato dalle fondamenta. Dobbiamo reinventare i valori della prossima civiltà, che dovrà poggiare su una sorta di "povertà."”

“Non so cosa sia la bellezza in astratto, e non mi interessa: è un'idea borghese, volatile, dipendente dalle diverse culture e dalle mode. Di sicuro non è un piacere per gli occhi, bensì per il cervello, e gli occhi ne sono soltanto lo strumento. Non puoi trovare "bello" qualcosa che sia stupido.”

“Riesco a parlare d'amore esclusivamente attraverso il sesso. Che, alla fin fine, è come la creatività: nasce da un processo (all'apparenza) irrazionale.”

“La mia idea è quella di portare felicità, rispetto, visione. poesia, surrealismo e magia [da progettare]. Dobbiamo sostituire la bellezza, che è un concetto culturale, con il bene, che è un concetto umanista.”

“I am just a copier, an impostor. I wait, I read magazines. After a while my brains send me a product… I am my brain's publisher.”

“This museum is like a ghost train—at every stage you find a surprise. Intuition prepares you for enlightenment, not audio-visual lectures. There's less to read, more to fee.”

“I think if I directly design their apartment, I will not help them… If you are rich and famous and you buy an apartment (house) and you don't know what to do, you will rent an interior designer. But in the end you will not make your own home. You will take the prefab life made by your interior designer and that is stupid. With ICON you will do it yourself.”

“My idea is to bring happiness, respect, vision. poetry, surrealism and magic [to design]. We have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist concept.”

“In perhaps 50 years, 60 years, we can finish completely this civilization, and offer to our children the possibility to invent a new story, a new poetry, a new romanticism.”

“It is important to inject love into the place where you live. It is not healthy to rent an interior designer to create a home for you because it is not good to live in another person's fantasy. People should select for themselves and stamp their own identity on a place. They should mix and match everything to make their own cocktail.”

“Today, the problem is not to produce more so you can sell more. The fundamental question is that of the product's right to exist. And it is the designer's right and duty, in the first place, to question the legitimacy of the product, and that is how he too comes to exist. Depending on what answer he comes up with, one of the most positive things a designer can do is refuse to do anything”

“I have refused everybody, including A-list celebrities.”

“I'm trying to move towards making objects which are honest, objects for non-consumers, for "modern rebels". Look, there are already millions of excellent chairs which are very comfortable, lamps which provide light, and so on. Is it necessary to create any more? The only question is: what will it bring to the human being who is going to use it? The urgent thing today is not to create a car or a chair which is more beautiful than another; what is urgent is for us all to fight with every means at our disposal against the fact that something is becoming extinct: love.”

“God is the answer when we don't know the answer.”

“Nobody is obliged to be genious but everybody is obliged to participate.”

“From a structural point of view, design is totally useless… I tried to give my products a little sense and energy. But even when I gave the best of myself, it was absurd.”

“Everything I do is a symbol. Everything, has a meaning.”

“A toothbrush is 28 grams of matter, 28 francs to buy and it's made to get rid of scraps of meat from between the teeth. Every gram of matter must provide its service as best it can. My trade is to be a producer of fertile surprises, an opener of doors in people's head.”

“I am sort of a modern monk. My wife and I have a collection of cabins in the middle of nowhere, and we stay out of everything. We don’t go to dinners. We don’t go to cocktails. We don’t go to movies. We don’t watch TV. I don’t use my energy on other people. I just work and read. I live with myself in front of my white page. Of course, for much of the year I have to travel, speak to journalists, engineers, things like that, and it’s the worst. But from the 15th of June to the 15th of September, I live completely secluded, locked in one of my houses, working from 8 in the morning to 8 at night, or making my own biorhythm: work three hours, sleep 45 minutes, work three hours, sleep 45 minutes, for 24 hours, without eating. It’s a little sick. But I’m like Dr. Faust. I signed a contract with the devil to sell my life for creativity.”

“[M]y main task when I was artistic director at Thomson for four years: to make the company virtuous. Not because there was a desire there to do evil, but because they had simply forgotten their purpose in life - to be of service, to use their skills to be of service. It is essential to try to play the role of a friendly "enemy within". That is, to catch the interest of these big companies so that they make money available, and research facilities, and distribution networks, for this return to what is the origin of all their activities - to serve others. It even means changing the words they use. One of the things I did at Thomson was to change their name. Thomson used to be called TCE, Thomson Consumer Electronic, and I asked them: who wants to be a "consumer of electronics?"”

“I manage by absence. I go to the office two, three days a month, and those are the worst days for me. So the people on my team do what they want, when they want, but the results have to be perfect, crystal perfect. I cannot accept laziness or something that is not intelligent or any type of delay. If we say we will deliver a project on the 20th at 5 PM, on the 20th at 5 PM we shall blow the minds of the people we’re presenting to.”

“You must have your own responsibility, your own consciousness.”

“The world wants water not taps, the world wants warmth not a heater.”