"You have to focus on your dreams, even if they go beyond common sense. How could this young girl from the suburbs of Detroit become a success in New York? It was always that dream."

"Every time that I wanted to give up, if I saw an interesting textile, print what ever, suddenly I would see a collection."

"To stand out in the crowd I liked the color purple."

"I read about two young ladies that went to Parsons, and when they graduated Elizabeth Taylor opened a store for them in Paris and I thought okay-that's all I have to do!"

"I think a dream can take you farther than anything."

"I think that I appeal to the girliness in all of us."

"The man that owned the company that I worked for called me into the office and said how can you be on our payroll and have your own New York Times ad! This has to stop! And I said but it can't I have orders to ship. And he said well you're fired. And that's how I started my business."

"I'm still dreaming."

"You have to be in the right place at the right time and understand that and know when it is your time and how you react to it and how you respond to it."

"I love research. I love learning..."

"To me, fashion is like a mirror... It's a reflection of the times. And if it doesn't reflect the times, it's not fashion. Because people aren't gonna be wearing it."

"I think whenever people talk about the 'Anna Sui woman,' they're talking about someone that's probably kind of more downtown, and there's always like this ambiguity: Is she a good girl, or a bad girl?"

""It's kind of a dream come true, because to me fashion is not just the clothes, it's all the accoutrements that go with it..."

"I live for fashion."

"I love the whole story of why something happened when it did and that’s what I put into the collections."

"I don’t answer to anyone."

"We do all the first samples here and all the production in the garment center, within these few blocks... I love the process."

"... I am a New York designer and the things are made in New York..."

"I grew up in Middle America and in the suburbs..."

"American television is popular everywhere and its what I grew up on."

"Be true to yourself and figure out what it is that you are good at."

"I was always attracted to the way rock stars dressed and the way their girlfriends dressed."

"When I am designing, I make a selection of music that will be the inspiration behind the whole collection... I will be blasting that music—it becomes a journey I take in my brain to transfer that sound to the clothing."

"I love history. I love art. I like to mix it all together, but in the end it somehow has to all make sense."

"I had a really typical, suburban, middle-class upbringing. The only thing out of the ordinary was being one of the few Chinese families in town."

"I am inspired by New York..."

"My main goal when I started my collection – and I didn’t think beyond this actually – was that I wanted to dress rock stars and the people that go to rock concerts."

"We picked up Madonna at The Ritz to go to the Gaultier show together, and she took off her coat. At this point she hadn’t even said a word to me, but she leaned over and said to me, Anna, I have a surprise for you, and she showed me she was wearing my dress."

"I’ve known a lot of talented people but the people that really, really, achieve success – there is ambition, focus and drive behind it."

"I bought a fur coat with my first pay cheque and it lived better than I did for years."

"People create their own obstacles."

"...all the formulas have flown out of the window."

"Sui's gleeful eye sees poetry where fashion conformists see only the absurd."

"The lynchpin of her unique career is encyclopedic curiosity as much as commercial acumen, studied process and a deep respect for the techniques and traditions of her craft."

"Anna Sui is synonymous with black, white and purple..."

"Anna Sui is one of the most important and influential American designers of the past twenty-five years."

"Anna Sui helped define the look of Generation X."

"...a woman who’s been nothing less than American fashion’s best storyteller for nearly three decades."

"When I think of her, I think of Mick Jagger. Jimi Hendrix. Heart. Stevie Nicks."

"Before eclecticism and the magpie mix were fashion world buzzwords, there was Anna Sui."

"She used to be a stylist... and I think that really sharpened her eye, she knows how to tell a story with clothes."

"What stayed true about Anna was this wide eyed wonder, she's always been able to bring such beauty into what she does. I feel like an Anna Sui show is an education."

"It's almost as though she's making one long movie and this movie jumps through times and places but the central character stays the same kind of girl."

"It doesn’t do a critic well to try to neatly connect the dots between Sui’s inspirations and her clothing—the way she mashes up her many references is a singular skill that seems innate and above logical explanation."