Peter Marino

“Koishikawa Korakuen Garden - one of Tokyo's oldest Japanese gardens, and one of the best spots for viewing the cherry blossoms.”

“I do really modern with materials that are so luxurious that they're, like, baroque.”

“The Peninsula - it's a combination of great service and good design.”

“I don't sell anything. So, I have a personal image, but I think that's because I'm from an art background, and I'm an artist, and I think most artists do have personal images. I consider myself more in that category of the way an artist had a look.”

“Design-wise, I look at everything. If I don't personally design it, I'll review it. I'm kind of creative director of the firm.”

“I believe that women would crawl across broken glass to get a cool pair of shoes.”

“I'm really a fighter against modernism equaling brutalism.”

“Nine out of nine architects start with a sketch, and then they say, 'What should we make it out of?' I start from the bottom up - what should it be made out of - and then I worry about what should it look like. The material, the color of the material, the way it feels, and the way you respond to it is every bit as valid as the form or the shape.”

“I collect art like other people eat pizza. I can't get enough of it. I need a constant source of inspiration.”

“I got into architecture via fine arts, and I was a sculptor myself, and I have always involved artists in my projects. When I say 'involved,' I mean I always bring artists in at the beginning projects before they're built and say, 'Will you do a room? Will you do a sculpture floating in mid-air? Will you make a chimney? Will you do something?'”

“There's a very important aspect to all my work, now more than ever, which is tying the interior design and architecture with the art.”

“My parents spent a lot of money so I wouldn't sound like I came from Queens. I went to speech class.”

“I have this 'Alice in Wonderland' idea in my head that a garden should be a place of wonderment.”

“Anytime I see an unusual combination of colors or patterns or texture, I buy it.”

“My father's house was on East 55th Street on 1st and 2nd Avenues. I'm fifth-generation Marino in the East 50s - I live on 57th Street. I can't be more East 50s.”

“Creating work for the time that one lives in means no retro thinking. It can and hopefully does mean timelessness.”

“People in Shanghai make a lot more money than the farmers in the rice paddies. The rice-paddy farmers are not buying Louis Vuitton bags, but the upwardly mobile ones in Shanghai, who are all working in Wall Street-type firms, are infinitely better-dressed than people in the West. Their women take this fashion thing seriously.”

“Universal human characteristics are a good base for great art.”

“I simply loathe the crude 1960s distinctions between commerce and art. For me, Warhol and pop obliterated all of those separations - that was the whole point of the Brillo Boxes and Campbell's Soup Cans. And believe it or not, in 2009, moronic journalists are still saying to me, 'Your work is so commercial.'”

“If you want to come up with a really original design idea, and you want to capture a whole new design direction, perhaps the best way to arrive at that is not by acting and thinking and doing like everybody else. That's all.”