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

It is always assumed that Venice is the ideal place for a honeymoon. This is a grave error. To live in Venice or even to visit it means that you fall in love with the city itself. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else.

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.

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

Venice is not only a city of fantasy and freedom. It is also a city of joy and pleasure.

[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.