Even though I grew up as a Sephardic Jew in Brooklyn where we ate Syrian food and went to temple, it was still America.

I'd love to talk to Joaquin Phoenix because he's a very private guy. Also, he's creating a new kind of sexy leading man. To me, his face is new and might be legendary someday.

All I want are high heels, high heels. If I was a girl, I'd wear a lot of high heels. High, stiletto heels.

That's one thing about fashion that you really shouldn't be-you can't be melancholy in fashion because people don't respond to it.

This is what I like about being a designer: You can't really get it until you see it.

Sometimes I'm really dressed up, and it really turns me on.

Even though I grew up as a Sephardic Jew in Brooklyn where we ate Syrian food and went to temple, it was still America.

In Paris, it used to feel like you were living in a museum. As beautiful as it was, it's still limited. But here you have just everything.

Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is.

I don't want to offend people.

You're not working with models, you're working with real women who have, like, anatomy. Models do not have anatomy.

Everyone asks, Will he make it, will she make it? You never make it.

I have a lot of obligations.

What if Woody Allen called me and said, I'm working on this movie and there's a really divine role for you. We want exactly you! It would be such a fantasy. Forget it! My idol, Woody Allen!

Mick Jagger, his face was very new. It became a sex symbol.

Just when I think I hate fashion, I hate clothes, I'm seized by this crazy thing that I have to do. I have this little studio now where I just draw. I can be in the room for three days and not even look up.

I'm not trying to be the next Joan Rivers.

I don't like people to feel completely described by the clothes they wear of mine. I want them to feel that they're describing themselves.

If you try to have a fashion show with Bach fugues and John Coltrane, it doesn't really work.

I'd love to talk to Angelina Jolie. On my show I would love her because she's a mysterious, mysterious figure.

Half the time I don't even think about it, I just throw something on because I'm so late or so busy.

Either it works or it doesn't.

The more relaxed you can get, the better you'll do.

When someone says you can't do what you know you can do, then you can't do anything.

You know who a role model for me is? George Ballanchine.

What you do, you don't think of as a product.

If I just do it, it will take less time than telling someone what I'm thinking, and have them free associate, and then come back to me and I'll hate it and I'll have to redo it.

The reason people like to watch ball games is because they don't really know exactly what's going to happen from moment to moment. That's why you watch the entire thing.

I'm so involved in melancholy.

How do I do it? I don't know how I wouldn't do it - that's the thing.

The last thing I want to become is one of those talking heads where everything is satiny smooth and you know what the next question is going to be.

You don't necessarily live for the moment; you live for hope-what you're going to get, what you're going to say, what you're going to think.

When people ask, Do you like children? I always say, I like some children, yes. Some children I don't like.

You know what makes me teary? Goya. Goya makes me cry.

You listen to Handel operas, right? And there are a thousand of them, right? And they all sound alike. If I look back on my work, maybe it's the same thing.

People say it's really the press who create those soundbites about fashion. That's what sells magazines and clothes.

Being a fashion designers its almost like being a doctor. You can touch a person because they cough and you can tell whether theyre ill.

You cant be melancholy in fashion because people dont respond to it.

An isolationist America is no bloody use to anyone.

My focus is that firearms are handled safely and that we can continue to enjoy them here in North America.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

Who cares about that stuff? This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American. Let Harry be a Jew.

Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

I'm about to become a member of the Chemists Society of America. I'm very proud of that.

It's a cyclical thing. When they make one, everyone loves them. Different genres come around in succession. People always welcome the western. It's America's genre.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

If we can just take a few companies, and use those as models, as examples, to show the rest of corporate America how they can become more competitive, that's what I'd like to do and that's what I hope to do.