American Quotes

I always say that I'm not the director, I'm part of the team.

I always find it kind of embarrassing, kind of funny, and kind of exciting. In New York I'm recognized a lot, although nobody says anything. You know, they stare at you just a second too long. But in Paris it's not as commonplace to be recognized.

For so many years, I felt so insecure, so inferior, and I still have those moments, but I have a newfound confidence since I got in shape and changed my diet.

Clothes mean nothing until someone lives in them.

But the customer is the final, final filter. What survives the whole process is what people wear. I'm not interested in making clothes that end up in some dusty museum.

But in another, I think a woman's going to go into a shop to find a coat or a jacket and I just don't think she's not going to go into a shop because of a bad review she probably didn't even read.

But I'm blessed to work with great people. I collaborate with brilliant stylists both here and in Paris. I work with a great design team. I really allow everyone to bring their ideas. I almost rely on them to inspire me.

Sometimes there are two very opposite directions, and we go with the stronger one at the end. It's an impulse thing, like, 'Oh, I love both so much, but it's got to be one or the other because the two don't work together.'

I have no problem going on record with this and probably have gone on record with this before, there aren't that many people who I respect. There just aren't.

It's quite nice to see that I didn't have to change who I was to reach two very different types of people.

I think there is something about luxury - it's not something people need, but it's what they want. It really pulls at their heart.

I love to take things that are everyday and comforting and make them into the most luxurious things in the world.

I'm useless at staring at a piece of white paper. But if you put a piece of white paper with a black line on it in front of me, I'll say no that black line should be red and it should go this way or that way.

I always find beauty in things that are odd and imperfect - they are much more interesting.

That was a time when I did love music, I couldn't get enough of what was going on. Maybe it was Nirvana that brought me back. I guess it was a comfort because something that sounded so right - and non-commercial - had become so influential, so immediately.

The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.

Some men tend to cling to old intellectual excitements, just as some belles, when they are old ladies, still cling to the fashions and coiffures of their exciting youth.

Sentimentality about nature denatures everything it touches.

Design is people.

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.

When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.

When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.

When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.

When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died.

There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious.

The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear.

The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.

If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.

I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.