A collection is like a dinner party. It is made up of the people you invite, but also the people you don't.

On my own account I certainly wouldn't have become the director of a couture house. I didn't have sufficient admiration for fashion as such to have done so.

I hate sentiment when it's inappropriate. I saw someone who went and saw an exhibition and came out in tears. If an exhibition drives you to tears you need to see a psychiatrist immediately. That's what I think.

Love is what makes me live, quite simply. It's the only thing that makes me work. It made me become what I am today.

I hate nostalgia. Today is always better than yesterday.

I love Marcel Proust, but I leave him to his nostalgia. I don't approach art the way most people do. I don't get into Proust by imagining that I am Charlus or whoever. It's the same thing in painting - I try to look at it objectively. There's no pathos in that. It's like Bach's "Goldberg Variations." They have to be approached with a scalpel.

When journalists come to interview me, it's a part of my life that is exhibited, as if pieces of clothing are being taken off one by one. But it's not very important really.