Diana Vreeland - On Money

"Money has nothing to do with style at all, but naturally it helps every situation. You need money to eat and sleep and look properly, to have a good life. Of course, people have grown up from under a stone and have come up with plenty of style. We’re all born to have it, we just need to get on to our own thing."  Diana Vreeland

 The oral biography of Diana Vreeland, whose pioneering exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art elevated fashion to a fine art.  One of 42 oral biographies from Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times.

Diana Vreeland - On Style

"I think style is a totally natural thing. One has standards and through concentration maintains them, that’s all it is. It’s a normal rhythm which covers everything. There’s nothing difficult about anything that is innate. Style is a wonderful thing to have because it maintains you through the way you behave, the literature you read, your life with friends, with children and with your family. Style is always growing and changing, always finding new outlets and interests, of course, particularly through work. I can’t imagine anything more onerous than not having a regular standard, a rhythm, a behavior, and a work."  Diana Vreeland 

The oral biography of Diana Vreeland, whose pioneering exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art elevated fashion to a fine art.  One of 42 profiles from Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - On teaching.

"I don’t pretend to be neutral on issues when I am not. I like the students to understand that most of us have a perspective, most thinking people do, but that it’s important to disclose one’s biases. I’m not trying to brainwash people, but I’m not going to present myself as neutral. I don’t think my students have any doubt where I stand on the Bill of Rights." Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The oral biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who continues to contribute to civil and women’s rights as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - On teaching.

"I found I liked teaching. I liked the sense of being my own boss. I had the good fortune not only to teach one of the subjects I wanted to teach but also to write about what interested me. That was different from a law firm where the notion of the hired gun is true to this extent: You have a client, he or she has a problem, and you work on that problem. There’s a tremendous luxury in being a law teacher in that you can spend most of your time doing whatever interests you." Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The oral biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who continues to contribute to civil and women’s rights as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - HERSTORY

"We know the founding fathers in the eighteenth century did not think men and women were or should be equal before the law. During the nineteenth century, after the Civil War, there were still tremendous differences in the law’s treatment of men and women. It was accepted that men should vote and women shouldn’t vote. It’s hard to read into provisions written over a century ago our modern concept that men and women should have equal opportunities, so far as government action is concerned. Yet the Supreme Court Justices have been doing just that. They have done so because our Constitution is meant to survive through the ages; there must be some adaptation to changing times and conditions. " Ruth Bader Ginsburg 

The oral biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who continues to contribute to civil and women’s rights as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - HERSTORY

"My husband is my biggest supporter. That was certainly true my first year in law school. Like all first-year law students, I had concerns about how I was doing in relation to all those brilliant people. My husband told his classmates and mine, “My wife is going to be on the Law Review.” Colleagues told me later they thought he lacked judgment, saying such a thing about a woman who didn’t look particularly impressive. But that’s the way he was, in law school and in most stages of our life after that." -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert.

For a limited time enjoy a complimentary chapter of Particular Passions, the oral biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who continues to contribute to civil and women’s rights as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg - On Equality.

"We believe in racial equality, we believe in free speech. We have recorded those beliefs in the Constitution, our fundamental instrument of government. We are advancing toward the belief that men and women should be seen as equal before the law. We should record that basic principle in the Constitution. We should do that in preference to reading the principle into Constitutional provisions drafted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert.

For a limited time enjoy a complimentary chapter of Particular Passions, the oral biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who continues to contribute to civil and women’s rights as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg - On sex discrimination.

"I was teaching law at Rutgers University in the late sixties when sex discrimination complaints began trickling into the New Jersey affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. Those complaints were referred to me because, well, sex discrimination was regarded as a woman’s job. At the same time my students wanted to put on a Law Day program about sex discrimination and the law, a subject I had not studied in a disciplined way at the time (1968-69). I repaired to the library and spent the better part of a month reading every article written and every published federal case in the area since the nation’s start. That was not an awesome task by any means. There was so little, it was amazing how little. In all that time there wasn’t as much as is produced in one year nowadays." Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert. For a limited time enjoy a complimentary chapter of Particular Passions, the oral biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who continues to contribute to civil and women’s rights as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

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Julia Child - whose love of French Culture brought the culinary arts to America.

"To be a good cook you have to have a love of the good, a love of hard work, and a love of creating. Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talent—science, mathematics, energy, history, experience—and the more experience you have the less likely are your experiments to end in drivel and disaster. The more you know, the more you can create. There’s no end to imagination in the kitchen."  Julia Child -- Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert. For a limited time, enjoy the a free chapter of Particular Passions on Facebook.

The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Julia Child - whose love of French Culture brought the culinary arts to America.

"I think you have to decide who your audience is. If you don’t pick your audience, you’re lost because you’re not really talking to anybody. My audience is people who like to cook, who want to really learn how to do it. I don’t pay any attention to other people because they wouldn’t look at such a program anyway. I’m a teacher. I like it. I want people to be able to do things that will turn out properly. Of course, I am interested in people who want to learn, and my books are written for people who really want to cook, and to cook the right way. If you are going to make French bread, for instance, you want to make the best possible bread—or, at least, I think you should want that. It should have the best possible texture and taste, and if it doesn’t, why bother doing it?" Julia Child -- Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert. For a limited time, enjoy the a free chapter of Particular Passions on Facebook. The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.