I don't collect anymore. Everything is so terribly expensive. I don't see anything I like anyhow.

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

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

I personally always hated Pop art.

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.

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