Innovation is often the ability to reach into the past and bring back what is good, what is beautiful, what is useful, what is lasting.

Rooms should be timeless.

Behind every attractive room there should be a very good reason.

I think everyone must have a first memory of some house, some room, a vivid picture that will remain deep down in one forever.

You can never achieve anything in a house unless you have things that have been passed down and you find a place for them for yourself.

It has not been an easy cross to bear. It has caused considerable confusion. My husband constantly complained about the awkwardness of being married to a woman whom he called Sister.

Even my aunt Joan, hopelessly sentimental about every member of our family, admitted that I was hideous.

Even the simplest wicker basket can become priceless when it is loved and cared for through the generations of a family.

I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.

Love is growing up.

My mother always told me that no matter how late it is, you take your makeup off. Take it off!

All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don't catch horses going around looking like people, do you?

The divisions of science are not like different lines that meet in one angle, but rather like the branches of trees that join in one trunk.

When man wanted to make a machine that would walk he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg.

In my twenties, my dad was paying half my rent and my ex boyfriend was paying the other half. I wasn't in a good place!

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

If a woman smiles, her dress must also smile.

I can't stand it. I can't stand someone being embarrassed. I don't know why. If someone slips over and the first thing they do is look around, I pretend I haven't seen it.