"We must start from the joy of life, from respect, from humanity, because the most important thing in life is having respect for other people. Especially for those who might think very differently from you."

"Since the very beginning, I have had this dream of living and working for the dignity of mankind."

"We need a new form of capitalism, a contemporary form of capitalism. I would like to add “humanistic” to that equation."

"Mankind is becoming more ethical, but it is not happening because man has decided to become better than he was 100 years ago. It’s because we know we live in a glass house where everybody can see."

"We have now swapped information for knowledge, which is not the same thing. I do not want to know."

"Man needs dignity even more than he needs bread."

"If you have 1,000 people, you have 1,000 geniuses. They’re just different kinds of genius and a different degree of intensity."

"...every human being has an amount of genius in them."

"In the winter on a Sunday afternoon, I can spend six hours in front of the fireplace, just looking at the flames and thinking. In the evening, I’m drunk with beautiful thoughts. My wife says to me, ‘What are you looking at?’ I say, ‘The fire.’ We have to take a step backward."

"I'm 65; I couldn't just wear a normal suit, a nice shirt and tie. Because I don't want to look that old - I want to look at least 10 years younger."

"I've always been quite fair in complexion. If I wear green, it does not suit me. It's one of these things in life that I cannot explain. It just is."

"I started with nothing and built something, and one day it will finish, and something new will come out of it."

"While things rest, the world regenerates."

"...there is no accessible luxury. There is no aspirational luxury. It’s either luxury or not luxury."

"I myself can wear joggers, a good pair of sneakers, then maybe a sweatshirt, and on top of it all, a blazer. That's what makes a difference in luxury terms."

"I nearly always wear almost the very same things. But I alter the combinations slightly."

"It is never challenging when you only do one thing in life. It is difficult to do everything, but if you specialise in one thing, you can focus with your head bent over one single thing the whole day and you have less likelihood of getting things wrong."

"Our soul needs to be fed on a daily basis too, as much as the body and the mind."

"Do you think that during the first five hours of the day you are the same as you are in the last five hours? No way. You’re tired, and if you’re tired, you stop listening, and the decisions you make are risky."

"So you do need to make a plan for the next three or 30 years, but also the next 300 or 3,000 years."

"Animals that are killed for their flesh lead miserable lives. They are kept in disgusting conditions. The simplest little thing you can do not to hurt animals is just not eat them. I'm bringing my four children up vegetarian, and I know absolutely that I'm giving them the very best start in life."

"When I was a small child and adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always beamed and said, ‘A vegetarian’. And that’s exactly what I became. Despite growing up with parents who lived on meals of meat and two veg, eating animals never made sense to me. … I grew up surrounded by dogs and cats and couldn’t understand why we protected these animals, played with them, encouraged them to sleep in our beds, and called them ‘pets’ while labelling other equally interesting, cuddly, and sentient animals ‘dinner’."

"The Mummy's Tomb was my only horror film, so I remember it vividly. We had to work all night on the kidnapping and graveyard scenes. Lon Chaney Jr. had a strap around his neck to support me. One arm was supposed to be paralyzed and he could only hold me with the other arm. I had this negligee with marabou—and one of the feathers somehow got under Lon’s rubber mummy mask. He was one unhappy actor—because he couldn’t get it out. After it was over, he thanked me for being petite. It seems some of my predecessors were a little on the heavy side! The day of the kidnapping scene—where the Mummy takes me from my bed, the director told me, "When you see him you really have to scream!" He thought since I’d never done anything like that before, I wouldn’t be able to do it. One look at Lon Chaney Jr. coming at me and it wasn’t hard to let out that scream at all!"

"They were a lot of fun but at the time I had two children. I’m just a mother at heart, so I decided it was time to retire from the screen. I would hate to be around today. In my time you learned your craft with small roles. They always handed you a script and told you, ‘This is your role.’ Now, you have to read for a part, over and over. 2,000 people have to approve before you get anything. I liked my era, where you were groomed."

"My path to vegetarianism was a slow one, it was something I thought about for a long time, and when I read “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer, something in me clicked. I believe that feeding oneself shouldn’t require torturing animals, and that one can take pleasure in food even without meat. … Young people who follow me know that Love Therapy refers to food that doesn’t cause harm to living animals or our planet. … I try to stick to a vegetarian diet because I think what humans are doing to animals is terrible. When I shop, I concentrate on fruits and vegetables. Everyone has a goal, and mine right now is to become vegan – I think of them as modern saints, as they make sacrifices for a better, collective good."

"I'm still dreaming."

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

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

"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!"

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

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

"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."

"The sexiest thing about a bikini is that it leaves something to the imagination, which is the best part."

"Longing and desire goes further than instant satisfaction. That's human nature."

"We manipulate fabric."

"I'm always about optimism and exuberance. It's what I feel about fashion."

"They don't need me to be another Establishment designer. That's not what I'm good at..."

"With the way that the times are, we're all looking for a little fantasy... Fantasy is such an important part of my fashion..."

"She really is one of our best."

"She’s... been a champion for the Garment District, raised money for the Bowery Mission, and made concerted efforts to help the victims of global tragedies—which is to say that she’s a kind person, who, it was agreed upon in a car after the show with other journalists, happens to also be one of the nicest people in fashion."

"Sui has never failed to stage a fantastical runway show..."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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