Top 100 Diana Vreeland Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 3

51. “The first thing to do is to arrange to be born in Paris. After that, everything follows quite naturally.”

— Diana Vreeland

52. “Red is the great clarifier – bright and revealing. I can’t imagine becoming bored with red – it would be like becoming bored with the person you love.”

— Diana Vreeland

53. “A world without leopards, well, who would want to live in it?”

— Diana Vreeland

54. “The hottest thing in the world is to wear pants with stockings.”

— Diana Vreeland

55. “Why don’t you have a room done up in every color green? This will take months, years, to collect, but it will be delightful-a melange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens, gay greens, clear, faded, and poison greens?”

— Diana Vreeland

56. “Elegance is innate. It has nothing to do with being well dressed. Elegance is refusal.”

— Diana Vreeland

57. “Chutney is marvelous. I’m mad about it. To me, it’s very imperial.”

— Diana Vreeland

58. “Power has got to be the most intoxicating thing in the world – and of all forms of power the most intoxicating is fame.”

— Diana Vreeland

59. “Style; all who have it have have one thing: originality.”

— Diana Vreeland

60. “All people are meant to be creative in a certain way. What way? Perhaps I was cut out to be a wonderful housewife, with a marvelous sense of cooking, being with my friends, running a perfect house. But I am not ambitious towards anything.”

— Diana Vreeland

61. “The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb.”

— Diana Vreeland

62. “Where would fashion be without literature?”

— Diana Vreeland

63. “Money has nothing to do with style at all, but naturally it helps every situation.”

— Diana Vreeland

64. “No one had a better sense of luxury than Coco Chanel, She really had the spirit of the 20th Century.”

— Diana Vreeland

65. “I certainly didn’t learn anything in school. My education was the world.”

— Diana Vreeland

66. “The West is boring itself to death! And talking itself to death!”

— Diana Vreeland

67. “Exaggeration is my only reality.”

— Diana Vreeland

68. “The future holds a golden world. It will be for beauty; it will be for intelligent productiveness.”

— Diana Vreeland

69. “I always say I hope to God I die in a town with a good tailor, a good shoemaker, and perhaps someone who’s interested in a little quelque chose d’autre.”

— Diana Vreeland

70. “I think we live only through our dreams and our imagination.”

— Diana Vreeland

71. “Balenciaga was incredibleI was madly infatuated with his clothes. His clothes were devastating. One fainted. One simply blew up and died.”

— Diana Vreeland

72. “If you think all the time every day of your life, you might as well kill yourself today and be happier tomorrow.”

— Diana Vreeland

73. “How boring to copy the past – with all the magnificence of today and tomorrow.”

— Diana Vreeland

74. “All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red.”

— Diana Vreeland

75. “A lie to get out of something, or take an advantage for oneself, that’s one thing; but a lie to make life more interesting – well, that’s entirely different.”

— Diana Vreeland

76. “Of course I was always mad about the ballet russe, mad about it!”

— Diana Vreeland

77. “I adore artifice. I always have.”

— Diana Vreeland

78. “I’m terrible on facts. But I always have an idea. If you have an idea, you’re well ahead.”

— Diana Vreeland

79. “A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever. One is not meant to laugh. One stays quiet and marvels. Spontaneously witty talk is without question the most fascinating entertainment there is.”

— Diana Vreeland

80. “In a Balenciaga you were the only woman in the room – no other woman existed.”

— Diana Vreeland

81. “Most people haven’t got a point of view; they need to have it given to them––and what’s more, they expect it from you.”

— Diana Vreeland

82. “You can see and feel everything in clothes.”

— Diana Vreeland

83. “I have a terrible time remembering exactly when my birthday is. Age is totally boring...”

— Diana Vreeland

84. “This is a great shame, but of course there have to be some things in life that not everybody can have, and great perfume is one of them.”

— Diana Vreeland

85. “I have always felt that the only great thing about an interview is the questions that are asked.”

— Diana Vreeland

86. “Within every girl is the possibility of arousing emotion. Without emotion there is no beauty.”

— Diana Vreeland

87. “Pleasure is everything.”

— Diana Vreeland

88. “I think part of my success as an editor came from never worrying about a fact, a cause, an atmosphere. It was me – projecting to the public. That was my job. I think I always had a perfectly clear view of what was possible for the public. Give ’em what they never knew they wanted.”

— Diana Vreeland

89. “The way to judge a good hand is that the fingers are the same size at the tip as where they come out of the hand itself.”

— Diana Vreeland

90. “I read everything! I would have read the phone book if you put it in front of me. I just read.”

— Diana Vreeland

91. “I wonder about prisoners. They’re told, “You are free, you are innocent, you can go anywhere.” I’m sure they usually feel nothing. They don’t burst into tears or hysterics or joy or “I told you so.” It’s nothing. To be on the straight path isn’t a bloody thing. It’s just ordinary.”

— Diana Vreeland

92. “Never worry about the facts. Just project an image to the public.”

— Diana Vreeland

93. “No one knows how hard one works.”

— Diana Vreeland

94. “Don’t you loathe the word “workaholic”? It has nothing to do with an important thing, that you and your secretary are at the office until 6:30. But that’s life, kiddo. 24-hour work doesn’t go on in America. 24-hour work is what Italy and Holland did after the war. The lights never went out!”

— Diana Vreeland

95. “Before even the technique, there is a dream. Chanel had it. The dream is everything.”

— Diana Vreeland

96. “I went to work to make money, not because I was bored. It was money that I wanted.”

— Diana Vreeland

97. “One thing I hold against Americans is that they have no flair for the rain. They seem unsettled by it; it’s against them: they take it as an assault, an inconvenience! But rain is so wonderfully cleansing, so refreshing, so calming...”

— Diana Vreeland

98. “When I discovered dancing, I learned to dream.”

— Diana Vreeland

99. “It’s only intelligent to wish to look after yourself properly.”

— Diana Vreeland

100. “What do I think about the way most people dress? Most people are not something one thinks about.”

— Diana Vreeland