"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."

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

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

"People create their own obstacles."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"I am inspired by New York..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I don’t answer to anyone."

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

"I live for fashion."

""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 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?"

"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 love research. I love learning..."

"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."

"“If it is the will of God.”"

"I get that skillashy, effizzy, I'm sexy, afrotasticthat skillashy, effizzy, I'm sexy and afrotasticAfrican Womanmy body no be for sale ohoriginalI no dey sell ohI be African woman ooooriginal"

"My contesting for election has nothing to do with being face of the sports festival. My contesting election was inspired by the fact that irrespective of who we are as entertainers, I believe we can bring the required change into the system. I believe we have what it takes in terms of exposure and grassroots reach to steer the wheel of the nation right. I was motivated by this realisation to contest. I contested for the Federal House of Representatives under the Federal Constituency of Odiabidi and Ahoada East."

"keep moving on and you will get there someday."

"One needs to take one’s time because good work takes time. But it must be worth the wait in the end."

"[It] is all about the African woman, her beauty and how she makes herself beautiful. An African woman is therefore not to be messed up with or looked down upon because she’s feminine. Even though she’s beautiful, she’s strong and has a sense of pride."

"People mistake it for a guy's name or a nick name. Gift is my real name and that is where I got the G in Muma Gee, forget the fact that I added double ‘e’ to it, just as it sounds Gee but the G is just the G in Gift. For the Muma, the Jamaicans will call mother Muma and papa Pupa. The Muma in my name means 'do good' in my language."

"“Subconsciously or unknowingly, it plays out in our attitude towards professionalism and commitment to work. The male artistes put in more to attain the heights they get to. I cannot say the same for the women and I am guilty as charged. There are lots of other distractions, both natural and artificial, but the bottom line is that if women put in as much effort as men do, there would be equal results.”"

"“I used to belong to the school of thought that females in the Nigerian music industry were disenfranchised. However, knowledge, time, maturity and research made me realise it’s the effect of our traditional beliefs that the girl-child is positioned to play a second fiddle.”"

"Generally speaking, I am not interested in the future and don't believe in it. First, I guess it is true that I don't trust the future, but, more to the point, I don't even trust the "myself" of tomorrow, nor, for that matter, of the day after. Basically, all I know, and all I am capable of understanding, is the "me" that is here, now, the "me" that has dragged his past with him to this point."

"It is also important to carefully read the cards that life deals you, and to play the right hand at the right moment for maximum effect. Having tasted a chilled champagne in a hotel suite is fine, but one should also have enjoyed a tasty glass of beer bought with one's last few coins while down and out. The breadth of experience will allow one to look into that cracked mirror, snicker, and hten tie a neckerchief into a bowtie and push back one's thinning hair. Now that would be a man with a genuine sense of style."

"To be modern is to tear the soul out of every thing."

"My whole life is made up of: "I'm sorry". I feel like I have to apologize to people, to things, to life itself. It's like, "I'm sorry to be here". I don't want to disturb anyone. But in my work, in the clothes I create, I'm actually telling people that I'm here. So, I guess I'm disturbing them, after all."

"I want to achieve anti-fashion through fashion. That's why I'm always heading in my own direction, in parallel to fashion."

"Dirty, stained, withered, broken things seem beautiful to me."

"In order to create an image almost similar to that of a pencil case standing up and walking, I try to eliminate all excess by cutting. I have the feeling that this process (of "cutting off") is linked in some way to "elegance". Elegance and so-called "eliminating excess", or the beauty that remains after excess has beeen eliminated..."

"I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion. If I can feel those things in works by others, then I like them."

"Oleg Cassini is the rarest of rare species: a man who genuinely loves women. And for all his talk it is he that has served them for most of his years. He has devoted his life to making women look and feel beautiful with his classically designed clothes most famously creating 'The Look' for Jacqueline Kennedy when she was First Lady. As the first designer to license in 1951, he has been creating everything from evening dresses to sunglasses in more than 60 countries ever since. His name has always suggested glamour, champagne, polo ponies, a box at the opera, he was married to a movie star, and engaged to Grace Kelly before she became a princess. The son of Russian aristocrats banished to Europe after the revolution...he designs clothes that betray a lifelong ache for lost grandeur, there is about him in every gesture from knocking ash from his cigar to straightening his tie an echo of old world distinction."

"Fantasy is often better than reality [...] It’s much more inspiring not to go to places than to go."

"There is no marriage, yet, for human beings and animals… I never thought that I would fall in love like this with a cat."

"Yet, for all his much-vaunted preservation of his privacy, he has always been noticeably willing to wile away an afternoon or so with journalists, spilling out well-honed anecdotes about himself - but these, of course, help maintain the mask. There is a particular story of which he seems especially fond, having trotted it out virtually word for word in almost every interview he has given during his 40-year career: "When I was a child in Germany," he merrily begins, "my parents gave me six bicycles - six bicycles, because I was a very spoilt child, hein? - and none of the other children had any because it was after the war, you know? But I wouldn't share, no, no, no. But I would instead come to school every day on a different bicycle and the other children would be very jealous." Even the various assistants, administrators and acolytes who flutter around him are so well trained in the importance of this anecdote that I am told it within minutes of my arrival, before they nervously usher me in to meet the man himself: "You know, when Karl was young, his parents gave him six bicycles ...""