Diana Vreeland Quotes

Chutney is marvelous. I'm mad about it. To me, it's very imperial.

A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever. One is not meant to laugh. One stays quiet and marvels. Spontaneously witty talk is without question the most fascinating entertainment there is.

If it isn't a passion, it isn't burning, it isn't on fire, you haven't lived.

I sincerely believe that energy grows from itself and the more energy you expand the more you create within yourself.

I've never met a leopard print I didn't like.

No one knows how hard one works.

Money has nothing to do with style at all, but naturally it helps every situation.

The only thing people are interested in is people.

Lighting is everything in a color.

Pink is the navy blue of India.

Without emotion there is no beauty

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.

Naturally, I’ve always been mad about clothes. You don’t get born in Paris to forget about clothes for a minute.

Of course I was always mad about the ballet russe, mad about it!

The personality is a work of art.

All people are meant to be creative in a certain way. What way? Perhaps I was cut out to be a wonderful housewife, with a marvelous sense of cooking, being with my friends, running a perfect house. But I am not ambitious towards anything.

I'm for everybody. There are no set rules. But if one's not a joiner. To hell with all of them!

I'm a person who is only invested in the pleasures and enjoyments of life. All the rest is left to the men. I've always remained what you might call "feminine" about the whole [work] thing.

Most people haven't got a point of view; they need to have it given to them––and what's more, they expect it from you.

Fragrances fill the senses with the mysterious.

I've always remained totally myself, which is to say, without an idea... of what to do.

Never fear being vulgar, just boring, middle class or dull.

Too much good taste can be very boring. Independent style, on the other hand, can be very inspiring.

You've got to have style, it helps you get out of bed in the morning.

A lie to get out of something, or take an advantage for oneself, that’s one thing; but a lie to make life more interesting—well, that’s entirely different.

There's only one very good life and that's the life you know you want and you make it yourself.

Black is the hardest color in the world to get right-except for gray.

Exaggeration is my only reality.

I wonder about prisoners. They're told, "You are free, you are innocent, you can go anywhere." I'm sure they usually feel nothing. They don't burst into tears or hysterics or joy or "I told you so." It's nothing. To be on the straight path isn't a bloody thing. It's just ordinary.

The way to judge a good hand is that the fingers are the same size at the tip as where they come out of the hand itself.

I read everything! I would have read the phone book if you put it in front of me. I just read.

If you had a bump on your nose, it made no difference so long as you had a marvelous body & good carriage. You held your head high, & you were a beauty You knew how to water-ski, & how to take a jet plane fast in the morning, arrive anywhere, & be anyone when you got off.

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.

Fashion must be the most intoxicating release from the banality of the world.

Never worry about the facts. Just project an image to the public.

The best time to leave a party is when the party’s just beginning. There’s no drink that kills except the drink that you didn’t want to take, as the saying goes, and there’s no hour that kills except the hour you stayed after you wanted to go home.

I was always fascinated by the absurdities and luxuries and the snobbism of the world that fashion magazines showed. Of course, it’s not for everyone...But I lived in that world, not only during my years in the magazines business but for years before, because I was always of that world-- at least in my imagination.

The hottest thing in the world is to wear pants with stockings.

You know the greatest thing is passion, without it what have you got? I mean if you love someone you can love them as much as you can love them but if it isn’t a passion, it isn’t burning, it isn’t on fire, you haven’t lived.

All my life I've pursued the perfect red.

We all need a splash of bad taste. No taste is what I am against.

Balenciaga did the most delicious evening clothes. Clothes aren't delicious any more.

Don't you loathe the word "workaholic"? It has nothing to do with an important thing, that you and your secretary are at the office until 6:30. But that's life, kiddo. 24-hour work doesn't go on in America. 24-hour work is what Italy and Holland did after the war. The lights never went out!

Water is God's tranquilizer.

My life has been more influenced by books than by any other one thing.

You can see and feel everything in clothes.

All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It’s exactly as if I’d said, ‘I want rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple’—they have no idea what I’m talking about. About the best red is to copy the color of a child’s cap in any Renaissance portrait.

I wasn't a fashion editor. I was the one and only fashion editor.