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Even with a computer, I can't get rid of all the papers in my life.
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 blood to my brain.
Carmen Dell'Orefice
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I don't live for stuff and things, and if I had to live in a cardboard box, I would put curtains on it.
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, 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.
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 a hard worker.
Carmen Dell'Orefice -
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.
Carmen Dell'Orefice -
We are oceans apart. My mother had a very difficult life.
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 with, you know, dignity.
Carmen Dell'Orefice
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I respect Gloria Steinem enormously. But I never wanted to be in any kind of movement - and if you're over a certain age, you better keep your bra on because nothing's worse than saggy duds.
Carmen Dell'Orefice -
We have to program the mind of the public that age is not ugly. Age is just age. Wake up, American children, and stop listening to other people's voices. Know yourself, be true to yourself and make a contribution. It took me half my life to know myself. I listened to other people's opinions and took them as gospel.
Carmen Dell'Orefice -
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.
Carmen Dell'Orefice -
There's always a boyfriend. Whatever else I have to give up on, I won't give up on love.
Carmen Dell'Orefice -
I've grown up in the lap of the world.
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 real money, but I've stayed happy.
Carmen Dell'Orefice
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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.'
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 right, oh, the fun. It is fun.
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 penniless and hungry for most of my youth. I washed the sheets in the bathtub in my bedroom and hung them out of the window on the clothes line, which in winter was difficult as the sheets would freeze and get stuck to the line.
Carmen Dell'Orefice -
We're all works of art in progress.
Carmen Dell'Orefice -
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.
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 find its way through life.
Carmen Dell'Orefice
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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.
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 taken by Norman Parkinson?
Carmen Dell'Orefice -
The money I've earned has enabled me to keep my life in my own hands. I had a terrific body, and I got paid for using 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 language of communication, like being psychic with each other.
Carmen Dell'Orefice