Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is.

When someone says you can’t do what you know you can do, then you can’t do anything.

What if Woody Allen called me and said, I’m working on this movie and there’s a really divine role for you. We want exactly you! It would be such a fantasy. Forget it! My idol, Woody Allen!

Even though I grew up as a Sephardic Jew in Brooklyn where we ate Syrian food and went to temple, it was still America.

I’m not trying to be the next Joan Rivers.

The more relaxed you can get, the better you’ll do.

You don’t necessarily live for the moment; you live for hope-what you’re going to get, what you’re going to say, what you’re going to think.

How do I do it? I don’t know how I wouldn’t do it – that’s the thing.

Either it works or it doesn’t.

I don’t want to offend people.

All I want are high heels, high heels. If I was a girl, I’d wear a lot of high heels. High, stiletto heels.

If I just do it, it will take less time than telling someone what I’m thinking, and have them free associate, and then come back to me and I’ll hate it and I’ll have to redo it.

I don’t like people to feel completely described by the clothes they wear of mine. I want them to feel that they’re describing themselves.

That’s one thing about fashion that you really shouldn’t be-you can’t be melancholy in fashion because people don’t respond to it.

In Paris, it used to feel like you were living in a museum. As beautiful as it was, it’s still limited. But here you have just everything.

Sometimes I’m really dressed up, and it really turns me on.

I have a lot of obligations.

I’d love to talk to Angelina Jolie. On my show I would love her because she’s a mysterious, mysterious figure.

You listen to Handel operas, right? And there are a thousand of them, right? And they all sound alike. If I look back on my work, maybe it’s the same thing.

Half the time I don’t even think about it, I just throw something on because I’m so late or so busy.

People say it’s really the press who create those soundbites about fashion. That’s what sells magazines and clothes.

You know what makes me teary? Goya. Goya makes me cry.

Mick Jagger, his face was very new. It became a sex symbol.

This is what I like about being a designer: You can’t really get it until you see it.

You’re not working with models, you’re working with real women who have, like, anatomy. Models do not have anatomy.

You know who a role model for me is? George Ballanchine.

Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is.

What you do, you don’t think of as a product.

Just when I think I hate fashion, I hate clothes, I’m seized by this crazy thing that I have to do. I have this little studio now where I just draw. I can be in the room for three days and not even look up.

I’m so involved in melancholy.

The last thing I want to become is one of those talking heads where everything is satiny smooth and you know what the next question is going to be.

When people ask, Do you like children? I always say, I like some children, yes. Some children I don’t like.

The reason people like to watch ball games is because they don’t really know exactly what’s going to happen from moment to moment. That’s why you watch the entire thing.

Everyone asks, Will he make it, will she make it? You never make it.

If you try to have a fashion show with Bach fugues and John Coltrane, it doesn’t really work.

I’d love to talk to Joaquin Phoenix because he’s a very private guy. Also, he’s creating a new kind of sexy leading man. To me, his face is new and might be legendary someday.