Iris Apfel Quotes

If you've been told all your life that you're good-looking, people just flock around you and you never really have to try or have to learn an interesting craft, skill or hobby - or even have depth.

I never felt pretty. I don't feel pretty now. I'm not a pretty person. I don't like pretty. So I don't feel badly. And I think it worked out well, because I found that all the girls I know who got by on their looks, as time went on and they faded, they were nothing. And they were very disappointed. When you're somebody like myself, in order to get around and be attractive, you have to develop something, you have to learn something, you have to do something. So you become a bit more interesting.

Hair is gray and the firers are burning. So many dreams on the shelf. You say I wanted you to be proud of me. I always wanted that myself.

To me, the tragedy about this whole image-obsessed society is that young girls get so caught up in just achieving that they forget to realize that they have so much more to offer the world.

I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point.

There's always going to be somebody that you consider maybe more beautiful. But nine times out of ten here in L.A., that beauty isn't home grown. It's usually manufactured. It sort of encourages me to work more within myself because I think that's not what appeals to me. Plastic and tons of makeup.

My mama told me in college, 'I love you, and you're God's child, but natural beauty will only take you so far.'

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being skin deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?

I've always felt so different from how I look. I meet so many pretty girls who are like, 'Here I am! Don't you want me because I look good?' That concept is so weird to me. I want to know, 'What else do you have going on?'

I don't want to be about the way I look - my body, my hair, my makeup, all those boring things.

We all lose our looks eventually. Better develop your character and interest in life.

Fashion's important to me, but beauty fades. All that stuff is fun while it lasts, but anything can happen tomorrow. You've got to have so much more about you than the way you look or your clothes.

In 1985, I saw a tape of myself where my eyes were puffy. I looked very tired and bedraggled and not as youthful as I would like to have been.

I hope maybe somehow I won't be in this business all my life, and I won't be one of those women that's trying to, you know, save what she looks like... My work is about something completely different. It's about what's inside.

I always felt second best. I was never the prettiest, never the skinniest, never the fastest in my sports. Never the smartest, because I have dyslexia. Then, all of a sudden, people were like, 'You're gorgeous.' And I was like, 'What?'

I've been with some of the most quote-unquote beautiful women in the world. But they're so ugly on the inside.

A personality for the incredibly beautiful can be a pointless cargo.

I mean all this focus on how we look on the outside. It's just all wrong

Men and women alike, if you think that altering the tip of your nose with surgery will make you happier, I would suggest you alter something much more malleable than your flesh, like your priorities, or your friends.

I always thought that if I ever got good reviews I'd be happy. It's so empty. It's never what I wanted, ever. All I wanted was just what everybody else wants - to be loved.

There are more important things to focus on in life than how you look.

Perhaps if we lived with less physical beauty we would develop our true natures more.

Now, more than ever, I realize just how illusory my undeserved success has been. I still hold out some hope of doing better, but age and unhappiness have sapped my strength.

I think my real fear is that I will get to old age and think I spent too much time concerned about the way that I look and other bullshit. That's really a fear of mine.

All I have going is my looks. When my beauty goes, I'm through.