Top 102 Quotes & Sayings by Vera Wang

I'm not really a girl who likes to go out to lunch or cocktails or store openings.

I've been designing since I was 8. I started sketching dresses I could wear when skating. I was always involved in all aspects of skating, not just the technique, the choreography, the music, but the visual aspects, too - what I should wear.

It's hard to balance everything. It's always challenging.

People get very trapped where they are. When they hear 'fashion' they get intimidated, particularly at the upper end because it's so elitist.

I love a black wedding dress.

A woman is never sexier than when she is comfortable in her clothes.

I was an art history major, but never specifically contemporary. I would say where I really stopped were the abstract expressionists in the New York school.

I adore the challenge of creating truly modern clothes, where a woman's personality and sense of self are revealed. I want people to see the dress, but focus on the woman.

It takes tremendous will to compete in any athletic endeavor, so it meant going to bed early and getting my homework done in advance. I had to sacrifice things, like a social life, to be a skater at 15. But I loved skating so much that it was worth everything to me.

I was trying to manage school and training for the Olympics and ended up not doing well at either. That was a big lesson in my life. My mother expected both.

As the mother of two daughters, I have great respect for women. And I don't ever want to lose that.

When I decided to get married at 40, I couldn't find a dress with the modernity or sophistication I wanted. That's when I saw the opportunity for a wedding gown business.

Fashion to me has become very disposable; I wanted to get back to craft, to clothes that could last.

I like the gritty parts of fashion, the design, the studio, the pictures.

I always see where I didn't do things the right way. I only see the heavy lifting. That's a bit of my wisdom, if you want to call it that.

I was a total fashion insider who became an outsider when I did bridal.

I am not the sort of woman who would wear high heels with a bathing suit. Let's get that straight right now.

That was a major goal for me - to be able to reach and encourage more women, to encourage them to express themselves and be what they want to be. People get very trapped where they are.

They never ask the celebrities why they don't wear their own clothes on the red carpet.

I do speak Mandarin, and I also relate to the hunger that China has for culture and architecture and style.

I work with structure, but I go outside the box and give it my own spin. I adore the challenge of creating truly modern clothes - where a woman's personality and sense of style are realized.

Brides today are increasingly sensitive to the tastes, feelings and finances of their attendants.

When I design a wedding dress with a bustle, it has to be one the bride can dance in. I love the idea that something is practical and still looks great.

When you have a passion for something then you tend not only to be better at it, but you work harder at it too.

The key is falling in love with something, anything. If your heart's attached to it, then your mind will be attached to it.

My bedroom is my sanctuary. It's like a refuge, and it's where I do a fair amount of designing - at least conceptually, if not literally.

I don't live through my kids. But I do know what will happen in life, and I just want them well prepared.

Figure skating has been a great influence for me. I took dance at the School of American Ballet, which helped my own skating. And whether you are a skater or a dancer, without sounding narcissistic, it is all about looking in the mirror.

My normal routine is pretty much putting out fires all day.

It's hard to juggle being a businessperson with being a creative person. You have to organize yourself - PR needs me for PR, and the licensing division needs me for licensing, the bridal people need me for bridal.

To me, eyewear goes way beyond being a prescription. It's like makeup. It's the most incredible accessory. The shape of a frame or the color of lenses can change your whole appearance.

New York for me is about work. If L.A. were to become a West Coast version of that, I'd shoot myself. The climate, the lifestyle - it really fits as the yin to my New York yang.

It's a remarkable exercise to sit and look at your own work over the years.

Even the most understated ceremony involves a certain respect for ritual and pageantry. No one plays more of a significant role than the bride's attendants.

I see myself as a true modernist. Even when I do a traditional gown, I give it a modern twist. I go to the past for research. I need to know what came before so I can break the rules.

It is horrible to say, but I was stigmatized by being a bridal designer for a long time. I am amazed I have been able to move beyond it. I had really all but given up trying, but I did it because it was my lifelong dream.

The funny thing is that I'm the girl who no one sees at the beach. Ask anyone who's traveled with me. Normally, I'm in so many layers, I look like Lawrence of Arabia!

Let's be realistic, how many people are buying a $2,000 skirt? I love to design things that people can actually buy. I'm staggered by what a boot costs today.

I do think I know more about clothes than any 500 designers, because there's nothing like wearing them. You buy them, you study them, and you start to understand how they're crafted.

Design is about point of view, and there should be some sort of woman or lifestyle or attitude in one's head as a designer.

I started at the very highest level so the upper end is something I know very well. I know it instinctively. But all the years I was designing, it frustrated me that I could reach so few women.

I hate phones. All businesses are personal businesses, and I always try my best to get back to people, but sometimes the barrage of calls is so enormous that if I just answered calls I would do nothing else.

The great thing about having a pool in L.A. is that I can use it year-round. And since I've always been an athlete, staying fit is very important.

My evening really begins when I take a long, hot bath. I light a candle, and I turn on the news and try to catch up. It's when I can breathe from the day to the night, and that means a lot to me.

There was no relationship between a wedding dress and fashion. There was no good taste, either. I realized that I could make an impression in terms of changing and readdressing the whole industry of bridal.

Things that came before, people and things and experiences - that does mean something to me. It doesn't mean I don't embrace the new, but I don't forget the past, either.

I wear Rick Owens T-shirts to bed. They are like my thermals, since I sleep with the room at near freezing temperatures, like a meat locker.

Just because you're from a city ten miles outside of St. Paul. It doesn't mean you don't read magazines, or the incredible Internet, and what's going on in the world. I never, ever take a client, or women, for granted.

All those years of skating and dancing have carried over. I can't design anything without thinking of how a woman's body will look and move when she's wearing it.

I wanted to define the vocabulary of a wedding both visually and intellectually. The book is about more than weddings or wedding dresses. It's a metaphor for women's lives, their creativity.

I've always tried to push myself technically and to push myself visually. That's been part of the journey.

I'm only waiting for Lindsay Lohan's fashion collection to come out. Ten years from now, there may be no real designers left.

My mother was extremely controlled, sort of flawless. And I always tend to be a bit more hippie.

It's for all the women who embrace my aesthetic, but can't afford a Vera Wang dress. If women can get anything out of it - a little bit of me or a lot of me, that's what's important.

I see myself as an arbiter of taste.

Success isn't about the end result, it's about what you learn along the way.

Don't be afraid to take time to learn. It's good to work for other people. I worked for others for 20 years. They paid me to learn.

I was the girl who nobody thought would ever get married. I was going to be a fashion nun the rest of my life. There are generations of them, those fashion nuns, living, eating, breathing clothes.

Fashion offers no greater challenge than finding what works for night without looking like you are wearing a costume.

Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating. But I carried that with me for the rest of my life.