“Normal people think I’m insane.”

You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

Life is not a beauty contest, some [ugly people] are great. What I hate is nasty, ugly people… the worst is ugly, short men. Women can be short, but for men it is impossible. It is something that they will not forgive in life… they are mean and they want to kill you.

If you’re not ready to do a non-stop dialogue with fashion, you should do another job.

I don’t like standard beauty – there is no beauty without strangeness.

I only know how to play one role: me.

When I was 14, I wanted to smoke because my mother smoked like mad. I wanted to smoke to look grown-up. But my mother said: ‘You shouldn’t smoke. Your hands are not that beautiful and that shows when you smoke.

Be politically correct, but please don’t bother other people with conversation about being politically correct, because that’s the end of everything. You want to create boredom? Be politically correct in your conversation.

I think tattoos are horrible. It’s like living in a Pucci dress full-time.

When I was a child, I never played with other children. I hated them.

When you hear designers complaining about the challenge of their profession, you have to say: don’t get carried away-it’s only dresses.

Clear thinking at the wrong moment can stifle creativity.

The smell of a freshly printed book is the best smell in the world.

My only ambition in life . . . is to wear size 28 jeans.

Luxury is the income tax of vanity. But it is so pleasant.

The most important piece in the house is the garbage can.

I am a black diamond, unfaceted. Black diamonds are rare, hard to cut, and therefore uncommercial.

I think there’s always some good reason to try and modernize most period things, because at the end of the day, they may have,

If the quality and quantity of continuous effort toward goals matters as much as I think it does, we may actually get more productive, not less, as we get older – even if we can’t pull all-nighters like we used to.

ISIS says they want to go back and reject modernity? Well, I think we should help them. We ought to bomb them back to the Stone Age.

Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.

I think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence.

The Falling’ was a big, flashy, bizarre experience. I kept on saying at the time it was a fluke because I did the audition, and I didn’t think anything would come of it.

I think it’s good to not edit your life too much, or you give people different standards.

I understand what rappers are talking about. I think rap is less about educating people about the black community and more about making money.