Gloria Vanderbilt

You must always have great, secret, big fat hopes for yourself in love and in life. The bigger, the better.

Everything in life is elusive.

I can't bear to look at Paris Hilton and all that. I mean, it really doesn't grab me. I don't think she's interesting, and the sense of values seems sort of off-kilter.

In anything there has to be dark and light. There's a lot of joy in my paintings and a lot of darkness.

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.'

I don't read anything about myself. As a child, there was something in me that was just instinctive. I want to be clear in my spirit, and I don't want to be blocked by things that get inside of you and kill you.

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 don't think age has anything to do with what you write about.

All art, from the paintings on the walls of cave dwellers to art created today, is autobiographical because it comes from the secret place in the soul where imagination resides.

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.

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