Carmen Dell'Orefice Quotes

My philosophy is the balance of remembering the past but not living in it, to know where you are in the moment, to project a little in the future and be ready to change. It’s how you experience the grace to enjoy the smell of the pavement after a rain – the little things in life to make you satisfied. I never settle for anything that doesn’t give me a modicum of pleasure if not total joy and satisfaction. It’s allowed, that’s what we’re supposed to feel. How can we, from an empty cup, offer a stranger a drink of water? You have to fill that cup to the brim!

I’m totally formed by my mother’s interest in fashion. As a Hungarian immigrant, she couldn’t afford clothes. She made all her clothes from patterns. It was not dépassé to make your own clothes, it was a respected skill and it was financially expedient. I learned that doing it yourself, having self-discipline and working went hand in hand. To work passionately at something is the key. I’m fortunate and blessed to have had, for the most part in my life, the privilege to work at something I’m passionate about.

My life has been amazing. How many other ladies of 76 can say that the snapshot on their senior citizen’s card was taken by Norman Parkinson?

I’m doing the best I can with the ravages of time on my body and I’m a work in progress. I can’t write a memoir because I can’t do it this week or next week… I try to be an inspiration to the young to respect their older people; we can’t stay the same, but we do the best we can with what’s left. You can’t whine about stuff, you have to learn to eat humble pie along the way and keep going, because the alternative is going to happen.

We’re all works of art in progress.

I don’t live for stuff and things, and if I had to live in a cardboard box, I would put curtains on it.

If you had the ceiling falling down in your living room, would you not go and have a repair?

I’m a working woman of 80 trying to work out what the image I can project is. How I can do it with, you know, dignity.

The money I’ve earned has enabled me to keep my life in my own hands. I had a terrific body, and I got paid for using it.

Even with a computer, I can’t get rid of all the papers in my life.

As a model, I didn’t have an identity; I was a chameleon, a silent actress. I was an amorphous thing. I wasn’t full of personality, I was full of solitude and solemnity. I wasn’t a cover-girl type.

You know, Italian-Hungarian – no matter how linear and cool I look on the outside, I have all that energy trying to find its way through life.