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

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.

When I write a novel, every word is mine. I welcome suggestions from my editor, but in the end, I make all the final decisions.

We can't all be good at everything. This is partly the logic behind having a team in the first place, so each role can be filled with the person best suited for that role and together, every job and every strength is covered.

I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

In film, you're so much in the hands and at the mercy of the editor, so sometimes it's good to watch it just to see how it turns out - it can be so different than how you imagined it. But sometimes it's better to just let it go for your own sense of self worth.

'Rectify' is un-busy. It might soothe you, if not distract you, from all you got going on.

When I was playing for tips in college, I felt a fire in my soul. I had the same principle of focus that I had learned playing football.

I like to live life in an understated way because that's who I am - an ordinary guy who has experienced an extraordinary journey.

In the West, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Justin Bieber are the face of their songs.

The world can't tell you who you are. You've just got to figure out who you are and be there, for better or worse.

People want me to do the strangest things. They want me to sign their arms or chests.

I enjoy working with the American Cancer Society because I fully support its mission of saving lives and creating a world with less cancer and more birthdays for everyone.