Genevieve Gorder

Oprah has this intense curiosity that I haven't found with any interviewer.

Design can have such a positive impact on the way people live and on their relationships and moods.

You need to have a home to go back to, whether it's a hotel room or a barn. It's only home when he's there.

You forget how many people watch TV until you come into a town like this. Everybody knows you, and I'm always humbled, especially when there are 500 little kids who all have their hair done like yours and want to be designers.

I'm so used to talk-show hosts just giving you a sound bite and not really being interested.

Being on Oprah? You realize that there are a couple of types of audience members. There are like the cult people in the audience who are just crying before she gets on. And then there are the people who are playing it cool. I definitely was somewhere in the middle.

I think we typically, as Northerners, stereotype what the South is in so many negative ways. We kind of forget all the beautiful things that they contribute to make this country a country.

I think taking design out of the studio and really having a relationship with the people that you're making it for really convinced me of how powerful a thing design is. It's not just an aesthetic decoration.

But instead of that stuff you get relationships with people and neighbors that you would never get in a city. People in small towns are a lot more open.

And the relationships that happen become so intense, deep, involved and complex and really hard to say goodbye to. The hardest part of the show is saying goodbye when it's all done. It really breaks you.

That was always my frustration with so many of these shows, because design is not an ambush... it's a relationship. You have to know how people move and live and work to be able to design for them.

Like I said, TLC has enough of my life. I have to keep some of it for myself.