I was born with the courage to live. Only those are unwise who have never dared to be fools.

I am going to make everything around me beautiful - that will be my life.

Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you.

I believe in optimism & plenty of white paint.

It is the personality of the mistress that the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our homes, no matter how much happiness they may find there.

The cardinal virtue of all beauty is restraint.

You will express yourself in your house whether you want to or not.

What is the goal? A house that is like the life that goes with it, a house that gives us beauty as we understand it- and beauty of a nobler kind that we may grow to understand.

Light, air and comfort - these three things I must always have in a room.

[At first sight of the Acropolis:] It's beige! My color!

There never has been a house so bad that it couldn't be made over into something worthwhile.

Fear plants the whisper to beware but doesn't look to see who's there.

Consider this a one-thousand horsepower divorce, sweetheart

Sometimes I'm really communicating with the audience and I'm hyper-engaged. Other times my eyes are closed and I just let it be what it is.

The first essential character [of civilization], I should say, is forethought. This, indeed, is what mainly distinguishes men from brutes and adults from children.

Ivy Hisselpenny was the unfortunate victim of circumstances that dictated she be only-just-pretty, only-just-wealthy, and possessed of a terrible propensity for wearing extremely silly hats.

Back in the day, when I was starting out, I'd get five or 10 emails and I'd respond to every one. But after my third or fourth book it got too time-consuming.

Often while traveling with a camera we arrive just as the sun slips over the horizon of a moment, too late to expose film, only time enough to expose our hearts.

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.

May all of you as Americans never forget your heroic origins, never fail to seek Divine guidance, and never lose your natural God-given optimism.

Train yourself: It is not by accident an artist becomes a good painter.