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.

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.

There are two sides to every question.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

So, for example, a country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown in the -the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you're dealt?

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Did you hear that? I didn't hear anything. Put that question another way.

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

The real question isn't whether you love your kids or not, but how well you are able to demonstrate your love and caring so that your children really feel loved.

There is no question that everybody who works in show business is lucky because of the number of people who wish they where working in show business.

A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements.

He said there is 80 of us, ready to come down and the next thing I knew is that Jo Brown dashed in and said your family has already moved and you have to move, the boat is ready to take you out. I didn't have time to ask, even ask a question.

So begins a question which has of late become more and more urgent: what is the relation of aesthetics to politics?