I look back on my life with great joy. I think it was a very successful life. I always did what I wanted and never cared what anyone thought. Women's lib? I was a liberated woman long before there was a name for it.

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.

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.

I was much more interested in literature than I was in art. I just got into art by mistake.

Peace was the one thing that Max (Ernst) needed in order to paint, and love was the one thing I needed in order to live. As neither of us gave the other what he most desired, our union was doomed to failure.

[On John Tunnard:] One day a marvelous man in a highly elaborate tweed coat walked into the gallery. He looked a little like Groucho Marx. He was as animated as a jazz-band leader, which he turned out to be. He showed us his gouaches, which were as musical as Kandinsky's, as delicate as Klee's, and as gay as Miró's.