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" I've always felt that color is intrinsically personal. It evokes a tremendous amount of emotion. If there's a color you respond to, that's something you can incorporate into your home. No one can tell you it's wrong. "

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" Before you begin designing or buying anything, you need to get real and ask yourself: What do you really want to use this room for? What do you want to do in this room but can't now? "

Nate Berkus

Now

Real

Yourself

" Everywhere in my house are these little things that have meanings and make me think of great memories. "

" It's my job to know what's available from every retailer, catalog, website, antiques mall, and craftsperson. A good designer or decorator has to have an almost encyclopedic knowledge. "

" We're not handling things anymore before they arrive on our doorstep. I like to feel how thin porcelain can be, run my hand over a textile, see if I want to sit in a chair. "

" I was a boy with one dream and one dream only: I wanted - no, strike that, I was desperate for - a room of my own. You see, in those days I shared a room with my little brother, Jesse, and it wasn't pretty. He was the Oscar to my Felix: messy, careless, and just a little bit sticky - exactly the way a kindergartner is supposed to be. "

" Books are the heart of any home, and I spend hours going through books for design inspiration. "

" I didn't grow up thinking I'd be a decorator. Design is my greatest passion, and it naturally just pulled me down the path. Same with TV. Being famous or having a show was never the motivation. I got a call and was swept up by the challenge of that first small space redesign. "

" Layering in different patterns will keep things from appearing too studied. "

" Design, to me, is part psychology, part sociology, and part magic. A good decorator should know what's going on in someone's marriage and how their kids are doing in school. "

" I think I was the only kid on the block who knew about furniture scale by the time I was 8. "

" I really can't live without my In-N-Out burgers. Honestly, I can't. Even when I'm doing the whole no-carb thing occasionally, I make an exception for these. They're too delicious to count. "

" I can change a light fixture, and I can do certain things. But I'm really bad in terms of construction. I can't do any of it on my own. "

" Twitter is a place where you share your thoughts, yourself... you don't want a plain white backdrop for that. You want the entire page to say something about who you are. Designer or not, if the urge strikes you, go for it. Put up that watercolor you've never shown anyone. Take a photo of that hat you just knitted... whatever it is, share it. "

" Some kids spent their allowance going to see 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'; I spent mine on a great-looking lamp I'd found at the flea market and a ceramic bowl from a neighborhood garage sale. "

" One of the biggest lessons I've learned during my time on 'Oprah' is that everyone wants to be heard. We all want to have our humanity acknowledged - to have others see us for who we truly are. We all want to know that we are valued, we are heard, we are understood. "

" I didn't necessarily want to be famous growing up, but I knew I would be a good famous person because I'm not offended if somebody comes up to me and knows things about me and wants to engage me in a conversation. "

" As a kid, I think I rearranged the rooms of almost every house on the block. "

" In a small space, you want to keep the bedding as simple as possible so it looks clean, calm and collected. "

" When I take on a design project, I have to jet from the bookstore to the hardware shop to the lamp store and back again just to collect a small portion of the many items I need to fill a home. But, when you hit the flea market, they're all right there. From booth to booth, you have the bases covered. "

" In design-speak, 'a library' means a room lined with books, floor-to ceiling, but it all depends on the space you have. You may have a free-standing bookshelf of your favorite books if that's all you have room for. "

" You can find a lot of reasonable buys at Wal-Mart. But one key to making it on a budget is by donating your time and labor to the project. Do-it-yourself projects will always help you save. "

" I'm interested in fashion; I buy fairly good pieces, and I think as I've gotten older, I've pared down a lot. "

" You can change the feel of your sofa by adding a thick, cozy throw and playing a couple of classic pillows off a more Moroccan-inspired one. "

Nate Berkus

You

Change

" In a modern loft, you can't just fill a space with furniture. Each piece has to be perfect. "

" We hold back our true feelings and beliefs, whether it's from a sense of being polite or fear of hurting someone's feelings. But what I have seen on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' is that no one benefits from holding back and keeping things bottled up inside. So I pride myself on speaking my mind and not being afraid to give honest feedback. "

" I see it every day: People trying to create a home that somebody else tells them they should have. I don't care if it's a magazine or a bossy friend - when somebody says, 'This is what's elegant, this is what's trendy,' if it doesn't represent you, you're not going to be happy. "

" I always had this New York fantasy of living in a glass high-rise. "

" I'm not going to say paint is an easy spruce-up. It takes time, it needs touch-ups, and you have to be very methodical. But it is worth it, and it isn't particularly expensive. "

" I live in a beautiful vintage building that was built in the heart of downtown Chicago. "

" You don't have to paint your walls lime green just to try to have your home feel decorated. If you're a classic dresser or preppy dresser or a modern dresser, you wear a lot of black - whatever it is - your home should reflect that as well. "