Carmen Dell'Orefice

There's no way I would have got to see so much of the world, with my humble background, without modelling. We were…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I've grown up in the lap of the world.

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

We're all works of art in progress.

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

My mother was harsh and constantly told me I had jug ears and heaven knows what else. But she was devoted and…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

When you understand how to do that dance, when the photographer says, 'Hold it, do it,' and you know you're getting it…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I'm a working woman of 80 trying to work out what the image I can project is. How I can do it…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I understood that synergistic dance between photographer and object - 'muse,' if you will, 'model,' whatever you call us. It's that silent…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I was friends with Salvador Dalí until the day he died. Lucky me. I can't say why. I didn't live to be…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I have had more magazine covers in the last 25 years than I have had in my whole elongated career. [...] Today…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I don't believe in funerals. I believe in celebrating life, and showing people, while they're alive, how much I care about them.…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I was the Kate Moss of my day, atypical of what the public wanted, which was Brigitte Bardot. I was always tall,…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

A lot of people around me were really staggeringly rich, which I never have been. I walked in between the raindrops of…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I hate a man who looks dirty.

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I respect Gloria Steinem enormously. But I never wanted to be in any kind of movement - and if you're over a…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

Being on the cover of 'Vogue' at 15 meant nothing to me. I never really understood what it was they were looking…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

My philosophy is the balance of remembering the past but not living in it, to know where you are in the moment,…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

You know, Italian-Hungarian - no matter how linear and cool I look on the outside, I have all that energy trying to…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

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

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

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

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I exercise every day. I don't get up and have a cup of coffee anymore, I get up and move to get…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

If your ceiling is falling down, don't you call someone in? I apply the same principle to myself.

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

I'm not giving in to anyone else's idea of how I ought to feel and look at 70. 'Retirement' is not a…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

My life has been amazing. How many other ladies of 76 can say that the snapshot on their senior citizen's card was…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice

My dream was to become a ballet dancer, but after a year in bed with rheumatic fever at 13, I had grown…

— Carmen Dell'Orefice