I'm not one of those girls who can think, 'Right, I'll put a scarf with that and a little brooch there and maybe a vintage jacket.' I'm so impressed with girls who look terrific in a little thing they picked up at the local charity shop. I just look ...
I was born too late to have any temptation with communism, or at least Soviet-type communism. Travelling in Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union, you clearly don't want to defend a system that would have empty shops and a totalitarian regime and in...
Everybody has somebody. It could be a friend, a lover, a spouse, a writing partner, or even That One Person You See At The Coffee Shop each day. Sometimes they exist to comfort you. Sometimes they exist to drive you absolutely mad. Be open to either ...
I used to write in a local coffee shop, but there was another guy, another writer, who kept sitting in my favorite seat. I would show up, and he would be there, and I would get exiled to a couch or something, and it would throw me off my game.
Picasso's superhuman gift for draftsmanship might have made him lazy about pursuing the full potential of color. It was not unusual for him to build a composition by first outlining figures and objects in black and then filling the interstices in a p...
I have this system where if I buy three or four new things, I give away three or four things. Sometimes, it's a very painful system, but shopping is even better when you know that someone else who needs it will be getting. Keep the clothing karma goi...
After assessing what's in your closet, make a list of what you need. Not want, but need. Write down the basics missing from your wardrobe. It could be a classic white shirt, a trenchcoat, or the perfect little black dress. Whatever the blank spots, w...
When Apple introduced its game-changing iPhone in 2007, Nokia was caught sleeping on the job. Although it had actually developed an iPhone-style device - complete with a color touchscreen, maps, online shopping, the lot - some seven years earlier. As...
I should probably confess that ice cream is my favorite food, and I eat it every night. When I go grocery shopping, I try to buy a new flavor, rather than reverting back to a favorite flavor. I'm on a mission to taste every flavor of ice cream out th...
French women love to shop and prepare food. They love to talk about what they have bought and made. It's a deeply natural love, but one that is erased in many other cultures. Most French women learn it from their mothers, some from their fathers. But...
Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in...
The marketplace for books when I entered the business shortly after World War II consisted of a thousand or so well stocked independent booksellers in major towns and cities supplemented by thousands of smaller shops that carried limited stocks of mo...
I've always had my own access to the public, because I started off making my clothes for a little shop, and so I've always had people buying them. I could always sell a few, even if I couldn't sell a lot, and somehow my business grew because people h...
The aesthetic came along the way, I think - just through experimenting, and going on tour, and trying stuff out on stage, having fun with it, and not taking it too seriously. If I had a ballgown at home, I'd wear it onstage. If I found something in a...
There was a time in L.A. when I drove to 7-Eleven to go grocery shopping, and I locked my keys in my car, which wasn't insured. My wallet was in there, and I couldn't call AAA, because I only had $7 in my bank account. It was one of those moments whe...
The great majority of Baghdad is a slum - a lot of it's new, but it's still slum. It's usually this concrete-block, one-room design with a door and a window, arranged one-up, one-down, often with a shop with nothing in it on the first floor, and then...
Some makeup companies have really good recycling policies, and it's worth finding out whether your favourites are among them. With MAC, for instance, you can take any of your old makeup containers into its shops, and the sweetest deal is that, once y...
I think I'm fairly good with money, but I've developed some strange tics - in shops I don't like to go to the counter unless I've got at least two things to buy. If I'm walking around with just one thing in my hand I'll put it back and wait a few wee...
I worked at a hot dog place, a bagel place, the Jersey Store and the hottest fashion joint around. I was getting too famous to work there anymore. I was almost showing up as a joke. I made $2,000 on my show the previous night and I'm going to go shop...
We're not going to persuade people in the developing world to go without, but neither can we afford a planet on which everyone lives like an American. Billions more people living in suburbs and driving SUVs to shopping malls is a recipe for planetary...
I wear my pajamas. That's the thing I love most about writing. I don't get changed until I actually have to go out of the house. I'll write and take a late lunch or go to a coffee shop when I get where I can't stand the four walls anymore.
