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 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.

I thought it would be nice to marry Virgil [Thomson] to have a musical background, but I never got far with the project.

I personally always hated Pop art.

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 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.