"I am going to get political on you. Because I am the most shallow person in the world, my mission is to see men's formal wear change a little bit. It is too rigid! Everybody looks like a penguin!"

"Thank you to all for your prayers and good wishes. It gave me the strength to persevere and warmed my heart."

"I don't hold that everybody has to love fashion. Some people like gardening."

"Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation."

"I came from a family where I felt great pressure to be financially successful, and I felt that staying in Chicago and doing theater, I was, in all likelihood, not going to find financial success."

"I wanted to become a kindergarten teacher like my mother."

"My mom has made it possible for me to be who I am. Our family is everything. Her greatest skill was encouraging me to find my own person and own independence."