Francois Nars

It's more fun to have a name rather than a number. I think this gives our products a personality. I get the names from literature, movies, opera, traveling, nature, poetry, sometimes even the street. I keep a small book that I write in. I wake up in the middle of the night and jot down a name for a lipstick or an eyeshadow.

Find your own way, have an open spirit, and believe in your own beauty.

My mother never wore much make-up, and she was a kind of natural beauty; she knew just how to enhance what she had.

I like beauty to be a bit edgy, not typical. For me, the only rule is looking good.

Looking at flowers, simple things in life. I don't need to look at gold and a castle; sometimes its very simple things that are very beautiful. I am keeping my eyes fresh to find beauty in many places, and in gold, too, sometimes!

I love the architecture magazines and all of the French magazines for decoration or whatever. I end up enjoying them more sometimes than the fashion magazines.

People have to learn that everybody is the same. If you wake up in the morning, even if you're a movie star, you look like everybody else. The reality is that makeup is there to help. That's what it's for.

It was never in my mind to be famous.