I think it's horrible that people have to be told. Don't smoke! Everybody knows it's bad for the health. But they have to forbid it.

- Karl Lagerfeld

I'm not an employee who goes to the office every morning at the same time. Then, vacations are needed.

- Karl Lagerfeld

I'm all self-taught. I never had a teacher. Even for English, and French, and German, I hardly went to school.

- Karl Lagerfeld

I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.

- Karl Lagerfeld

I never smoked. I never drank and I never took drugs. The funny thing is, nothing is more boring, people like this. For me, it's OK. But most of my friends, at least they smoke and drink.

- Karl Lagerfeld

Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes with time.

- Karl Lagerfeld

There will be gay couples; it will exist. It is not very nice that people who are married - who divorce in three seconds - don't want protection for the others. The legal system should protect everyone, not just the few people who think they are above everybody else because they are married.

- Karl Lagerfeld

But if I have a lot of imagination, I could tell myself whatever I wanted, you know. I handle myself quite well. I'm kind of fascist with myself, you know. There's no discussion. There is an order. You follow it.

- Karl Lagerfeld

There are less than 1 per cent of anorexic girls, but there more than 30 per cent of girls in France - I don't know about England - that are much, much overweight. And it is much more dangerous and very bad for the health.

- Karl Lagerfeld

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said - and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded - 'It's like hair color. It's nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It's not a subject.' This was a very healthy attitude.

- Karl Lagerfeld