Quotes from Mary Quant

I've always loved painting and drawing. I wish I'd developed it more and exhibited.

Having money is rather like being a blond. It is more fun but not vital.

I have an awful lot of energy.

Britain has always had more art schools per capita than any other country.

People call things 'vulgar' when they are new to them. When they have become old, they become 'good taste.'

Good taste is death; vulgarity is life.

As a child, I used to spend nearly all my summer holidays with my aunt in Wales, and we used to catch mackerel in a boat and then cook them on board.

Jean Shrimpton was the most beautiful of all the models I have known. To walk down the King's Road, Chelsea, with Shrimpton was like walking through the rye. Strong men just keeled over right and left as she strode up the street.

I don't have birthdays.

I liked my skirts short because I wanted to run and catch the bus to get to work.

My garden in England is full of eating-out places, for heat waves, warm September evenings, or lunch on a frosty Christmas morning.

I'm greedy, but I've always watched what I eat because I want to look good. I gave up butter, cream and sugar years ago.

For one thing, I am still working as an adviser on fashion, design and colour and stuff.

In America, they never make anything without first having a market survey to ask the public what they want. People only ask for things they already know about, so you don't get anything new that way. That's why American fashion is stuck.

The Lord's Prayer is the most perfect piece of poetry. I always feel at peace and moved when I recite it.

The fashionable woman wears clothes. The clothes don't wear her.

Many of my friends are chefs, and I learnt to cook watching them.

I love restaurants, and I love cooking.

In the old parts of Nice, the family tables are out in the cobbled streets so that you can't drive past. They insist you join them at midnight on a hot July evening. So that's just what you do, abandoning the car.

I saw no reason why childhood shouldn't last forever. So I created clothes that worked and moved and allowed people to run, to jump, to leap, to retain their precious freedom.

I have been on a diet since 1962.

As the daughter of two teachers with first-class degrees, I'd always seen myself as a duffer by comparison.

Risk it, go for it. Life always gives you another chance, another go at it. It's very important to take enormous risks.

Fashion is a tool... to compete in life outside the home. People like you better, without knowing why, because people always react well to a person they like the looks of.