Carmen DellOrefice Quotes

We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to rent rooms for us.

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.

When you understand how to do that dance, when the photographer says, ‘Hold it, do it,’ and you know you’re getting it right, oh, the fun. It is fun.

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.

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

I was the one who kept telling my second husband he should become a cinematographer. I paid for him to get his director‘s card, and he went on to make ‘Godspell.’

I was the Kate Moss of my day, atypical of what the public wanted, which was Brigitte Bardot. I was always tall, skinny and angular. But now, society has bought 55 years of my marketing ‘Carmen,’ and I’m considered beautiful. I hope that empowers older women.

A lot of people around me were really staggeringly rich, which I never have been. I walked in between the raindrops of real money, but I’ve stayed happy.

I hate a man who looks dirty.

My dream was to become a ballet dancer, but after a year in bed with rheumatic fever at 13, I had grown too tall, and had no muscle tone left. I tried a ballet class and couldn’t even do a plie without falling over. It was my first death.

I’m not giving in to anyone else‘s idea of how I ought to feel and look at 70. ‘Retirement‘ is not a word I can even visualize. I retire when I go to bed!

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

Being on the cover of ‘Vogue‘ at 15 meant nothing to me. I never really understood what it was they were looking at, what they saw in me.

I’m loath to do interviews. What comes out is generally not what I meant or thought I was saying or thought they were asking.

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

I exercise every day. I don’t get up and have a cup of coffee anymore, I get up and move to get blood to my brain.

Fashion is more about taste than money – you have to understand your body and tailor clothes to your needs; it’s all about the fit. I do the alterations myself – I’m quite a seamstress – it’s the influence of my Hungarian mother.

I understood that synergistic dance between photographer and object – ‘muse,’ if you will, ‘model,’ whatever you call us. It’s that silent language of communication, like being psychic with each other.

People shouldn’t look at me and think life is one big piece of glamour. That’s the marketing, the spin. Life is challenging. But I have courage, strength, and enough good health to see the positive.

I think America may be growing up and accepting the fact that the bulk of life exists beyond 50. Because demographically… the vast population is over 50.

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

There’s always a boyfriend. Whatever else I have to give up on, I won‘t give up on love.

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.

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 didn’t marry to have children. I married to have a relationship, and I was blessed with one child. I was an only child, too – my mother was smarter than most women today; she just had me.