"Going out in Paris was like going out in the '30s dressed like the Andrews Sisters. It was everything I'd seen in books at my grandparents' house, only it was our generation."

"We all look for lost time."

"The notion of time bothers me. You look at thirty-year-old photographs and realize how the time has passed."

"French design hardly exists, except as artificial modernism."

"They say that the best furniture and clothing design from the '50s and '60s is Scandinavian or Milanese."

"But the Milanese have made bad choices, bad fashion, and bad jewelry."

"There's always some kind of hidden logic."

"Italy is a divided country without a center."

"I translated Beatles songs for my English class."

"The idea of seeing everybody clad the same is not really my cup of tea."

"I'd experienced the '40s and '50s by looking at my grandparents' old clothes, books, and magazines."

"In Italy, the Milanese are well organized but follow bourgeois taste. They adhere to certain codes of elegance, but not to individualism."