I was friends with Salvador Dalí until the day he died. Lucky me. I can't say why. I didn't live to be noticed, I lived to enjoy the excitement of doing right that day, and I knew I was doing it right when they would have me back. That was the thrill for me. I yearned to be validated because my mother was stern and I never did much right, that's how I perceived it.

I'm a working woman of 80 trying to work out what the image I can project is. How I can do it with, you know, dignity.

The minute we don't finance the arts, the accountants, attorneys and politicians keep taking the cream of money off the top and it doesn't trickle down unless all of society understands that we must support the arts, whether it's ballet, opera, fashion. Fashion is like opera, is like ballet, is like theatre. It's a visual theatre.

Even with a computer, I can't get rid of all the papers in my life.

I'm loath to do interviews. What comes out is generally not what I meant or thought I was saying or thought they were asking.

If your ceiling is falling down, don't you call someone in? I apply the same principle to myself.

As a model, I didn't have an identity; I was a chameleon, a silent actress. I was an amorphous thing. I wasn't full of personality, I was full of solitude and solemnity. I wasn't a cover-girl type.