Gloria Vanderbilt

“Art brings a message into a room. It should make us perceive in a new way - either through color, form or narrative content - something we had not perceived before... and perhaps reveal something to you about yourself.”

“I do think all art is autobiographical, and I do think I know quite a bit about women. I don't know anything about men.”

“And it came to me, and I knew what I had to have before my soul would rest. I wanted to belong - to belong to my mother. And in return - I wanted my mother to belong to me.”

“Throughout my life I have taken detours in acting and writing, but art remains my abiding passion.”

“A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people.”

“I love to think that animals and humans and plants and fishes and trees and stars and the moon are all connected.”

“Everything in life is elusive.”

“When I started travelling, I would go to a city and be on television and I used to get the question, 'Why do you work? If I were you, I'd just go and lie on a beach somewhere.' And I'd answer, 'Well, I wanted to make something of my life.'”

“To be happy--one must find one's bliss”

“Many times, working is kind of like channeling, and I really don't know what's going to fall on the page. I just did this image of a fat girl and put her on a tiny mountain peak of grass that she's walking over. It just amused me.”

“I do spend money. I like to spend money, on houses - on furnishing houses. And I love to give presents to people. It's just in my nature to be that way. I always spent money I had. And I always spent what I made. I'm not stingy.”

“I believe in marriage and fidelity.”

“Death is the price you paid for being born.”

“The fame you earn has a different taste from the fame that is forced upon you.”

“I lived in Europe until I was 9, really.”

“Years ago I asked my friend, the great actress Ruth Gordon, to articulate in a few words the secret to her indomitable, unsinkable spirit. Her reply was a gift that became a mantra for me:“It takes courage.It takes believing in it.It takes work.It takes rising above it.It takes me liking you, and you liking me.It takes the dreaming soul of the human race that wants it to go right.Never stop dreaming.Think about it.”

“I don't like cold people at all. It makes me feel really insecure.”

“I've been really very fortunate with the men I've been involved with. They've always really treated me very, very wonderfully. And whenever anything broke up, I was always the one to leave. So I think I've been really very, very lucky.”

“If you don't have a father, you don't miss it, because you don't know what it is. It was really only when I married Wyatt Cooper that I understood what it was like to have a father, because he was just an extraordinary father.”

“A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper.”