Joan Jedell: What's your age-defying formula? You've obviously tapped into the fountain of youth.
Liz Smith: I think it's just to stay very busy and interested in everything. You know, not give up and not accept being old. People aren't old anymore unless they want to be. I mean, if they get sick or injure themselves, that's different of course. But a healthy person doesn't have to be old, act old, or look old. There are a lot of options open, like exercise and eating better, that most of us are doing now.

JJ: So what's your take on plastic surgery?
LS: I think plastic surgery's great. It makes people feel happier about themselves. I had work done a long time ago by Tom Rees. I think it sort of postponed the inevitable.

JJ: And you certainly have. What celebrities have you come across that share your formula for staying young at any age?
LS: Let's see ... Goldie Hawn is America's perennial young sweetheart. And she's over 50. Raquel Welch is just a phenomenon. She's sexy and looks great. Then there are those older women in New York—Kitty Hart, Brooke Astor, and Pauline Trigere. They're in their nineties and act like 65.

JJ: What about men?
LS: There are lots of older men in New York who are younger than springtime. Mike Wallace, 83; Skitch Henderson, over 80; Isaac Stern. All kinds of men who are very sexy and with it, and you'd never know are over eighty.

JJ: At your party, I noticed a little midriff showed on you. Was it intentional?
LS: [laughs] Christie Brinkley gave me that top years ago, and I never wore it. I thought, this is just too exposing for me. And so that night I thought: "What can I wear under this jacket that will look dressy?" So I found this thing lying in the drawer, put it on and thought, I wish it covered my midriff—but maybe nobody will notice.