In Manhattan, when you're out of the front door, you're on, and you have to be ready to smile and speak to people.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

The curiosity of the neighbors about you, is a tribute to your individuality, and you should encourage it

Central Europe is full of little countries standing shoulder to shoulder with no window to the sea. They are like the passengers in a rush-hour train which has stopped between stations for three centuries. And they all hate one another. And they're all crushed together waving their national flags, clanking their national chains, jabbering their national language.

I read all the books I could find about manners, and the extraordinary thing was, in all books up to the end of the Second World War, most were directed at how to comport yourself in the presence of the ladies.

Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.

That's the only sense in which I've been lucky: I have the kind of face to which cosmetics could be applied.