GLORIA VANDERBILT

If you don't have a father, you don't miss it, because you don't know what it is. It was really only when I married Wyatt Cooper that I understood what it was like to have a father, because he was just an extraordinary father.

I don't read anything about myself. As a child, there was something in me that was just instinctive. I want to be clear in my spirit, and I don't want to be blocked by things that get inside of you and kill you.

I do think all art is autobiographical, and I do think I know quite a bit about women. I don't know anything about men.

I lived in Europe until I was 9, really.

I do spend money. I like to spend money, on houses - on furnishing houses. And I love to give presents to people. It's just in my nature to be that way. I always spent money I had. And I always spent what I made. I'm not stingy.

I've had many, many loves. I always feel that something wonderful is going to happen. And it always does.

I was born during an eclipse. I believe very much in astrology. If you were born on an eclipse it indicates your destiny is chaotic.

All art, from the paintings on the walls of cave dwellers to art created today, is autobiographical because it comes from the secret place in the soul where imagination resides.

The fame you earn has a different taste from the fame that is forced upon you.

When I started travelling, I would go to a city and be on television and I used to get the question, 'Why do you work? If I were you, I'd just go and lie on a beach somewhere.' And I'd answer, 'Well, I wanted to make something of my life.'

I do take very good care of myself, and I'm always in love. And by that I mean I have an appetite for life. I'm in love with beauty and things and people and love and being in love, and those things I think, on the inside, show on the outside.

You must always have great, secret, big fat hopes for yourself in love and in life. The bigger, the better.

In anything there has to be dark and light. There's a lot of joy in my paintings and a lot of darkness.

I've always believed that one woman's success can only help another woman's success.

In mythology and palmistry, the left hand is called the dreamer because the ring finger on the left hand leads directly to the heart. I find it a very poetic idea. And that's why I only wear nail polish on my left ring finger.

I've been really very fortunate with the men I've been involved with. They've always really treated me very, very wonderfully. And whenever anything broke up, I was always the one to leave. So I think I've been really very, very lucky.

I don't think age has anything to do with what you write about.

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people.

And it came to me, and I knew what I had to have before my soul would rest. I wanted to belong - to belong to my mother. And in return - I wanted my mother to belong to me.

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper.

I don't categorize myself as an 85-year-old woman who has written an erotic novel. I categorize myself as a writer who's written an erotic novel.

Many times, working is kind of like channeling, and I really don't know what's going to fall on the page. I just did this image of a fat girl and put her on a tiny mountain peak of grass that she's walking over. It just amused me.

Art brings a message into a room. It should make us perceive in a new way - either through color, form or narrative content - something we had not perceived before... and perhaps reveal something to you about yourself.

I'm in love with beauty and things and people and love and being in love, and those things, I think, on the inside, show on the outside.

Throughout my life I have taken detours in acting and writing, but art remains my abiding passion.