[When asked how many husbands she had had:] My own, or other people's?

I took advice from none but the best. I listened, how I listened! That's how I finally became my own expert.

To go out in a gondola at night is to reconstruct in one's imagination the true Venice, the Venice of the past alive with romance, elopements, abductions, revenged passions, intrigues, adulteries, denouncements, unaccountable deaths, gambling, lute playing and singing.

My mother's one idea was to sacrifice her life to her children and she had done nothing else since the death of my father. We wished that she had married again instead.

Having plenty of time and all the museum's funds at my disposal, I put myself on a regime to buy one picture a day.

[On amassing art for her collection:] My motto was 'Buy a picture a day' and I lived up to it.

[On Venice:] Every hour of the day is a miracle of light. In summer with daybreak the rising sun produces such a tender magic on the water that it nearly breaks one's heart.