Carmen Dell'Orefice

My dream was to become a ballet dancer, but after a year in bed with rheumatic fever at 13, I had grown too tall, and had no muscle tone left. I tried a ballet class and couldn't even do a plie without falling over. It was my first death. ”

If your ceiling is falling down, don't you call someone in? I apply the same principle to myself. ”

There's always a boyfriend. Whatever else I have to give up on, I won't give up on love. ”

I didn't marry to have children. I married to have a relationship, and I was blessed with one child. I was an only child, too - my mother was smarter than most women today; she just had me. ”

I don't believe in funerals. I believe in celebrating life, and showing people, while they're alive, how much I care about them. And I don't believe in this business of burial. I'm an organ donor. Whether its my skin or my eyeballs, use whatever bits are intact and put the rest in the garbage. ”

We are oceans apart. My mother had a very difficult life. ”

Even with a computer, I can't get rid of all the papers in my life. ”

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. ”

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? ”

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. ”