God was fair to the Japanese. He gave them no oil, no coal, no diamonds, no gold, no natural resources — nothing! Nothing comes from the island that you can sustain a civilization on. What God gave the Japanese was a sense of style—maintained through the centuries through hard work and the disciplines of ambition.

Balenciaga often said that women did not have to be perfect or beautiful to wear his clothes. When they wore his clothes, they became beautiful.

Water is God's tranquilizer.

Before even the technique, there is a dream. Chanel had it. The dream is everything.

You're not supposed to give people what they want, you're supposed to give them what they don't know that they want yet.

I think laying out a beautiful picture in a beautiful way is a bloody bore. I think you've got to blow it right across the page and down the side, crop it, cut it in half, combine it with something else... do something with it. You've got to make something out of it.

Don't look back. Just go ahead. Give ideas away. Under every idea there's a new idea waiting to be born.