“You know, lieutenant, you wear your weapon the way other women wear pearls.""It's not a fashion accessory.”

“Coco Chanel used to talk about wearing more than one string of pearls. Why wear one if you can wear two, or something to that effect. I think that one string of pearls is just fine. But that's because my pearls are black, hers were white.”

“Aer-O-Smith. Arrowsmith. Does the shirt belong to your weapon dealer?”“No.”“Then why do you wear the shirt of someone else’s weapon dealer?”

“The fashionable woman wears clothes. The clothes don't wear her.”

“At its best fashion is a game. But for women it's a compulsory game, like net ball, and you can't get out of it by faking your period. I know I have tried. And so for a woman every outfit is a hopeful spell, cast to influence the outcome of the day. An act of trying to predict your fate, like looking at your horoscope. No wonder there are so many fashion magazines. No wonder the fashion industry is worth an estimated 900 billion dollars a year. No wonder every woman's first thought is, for nearly every event in her life, be it work, snow or birth. The semi-despairing cry of "but what will I wear?" Because when a woman says I have nothing to wear, what she really means is there is nothing here for who I am supposed to be today.”

“I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.”