“If you ever want something badly, let it go. If it comes back to you, then it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never yours to begin with.”

I can’t believe we’re being paid to live in New York.

Fragrance is a bit of a selfish gift because it’s comforting when you’re near someone and you recognize their smell.

My mom taught me this really great beauty tip. She used to put oil or mayonnaise on the bottom half of her hair before she would shower.

In high school, there are so many cliques. You’re never safe.

I can read a four-page scene once and have it memorized. It’s a skill you learn in school: disposable cramming.

It’s difficult to wear such high Louboutins and also freestyle rap.

I need good friends who can say, ‘I love you to death, but you look terrible in that, and you need to change right now.’

Often you see people on the red carpet with tight up-dos, but that makes me feel stiff.

When I moved to New York, I started switching fragrances. Between different seasons I would change fragrance, or if I was going out for a big fancy night versus going out in the daytime. But I also found that I was changing and growing so much.

People gossip. People are insecure, so they talk about other people so that they won’t be talked about.

I always love somebody who makes me laugh, who’s fun to be with.

Family is at the heart of everything I do.

I just want Beyonce to be the mother of my children.

I’ve never been a big fan of gossip. Being a victim of it, I knew how much it hurt.

I’m always the person who’s taking everyone else’s kid and putting them on my hip, so I’ve kinda always been a mama.

I went straight from high school to ‘Gossip Girl,’ and both were very structured, scheduled environments, so I never had freedom to explore and carve my own path.

ISIS says they want to go back and reject modernity? Well, I think we should help them. We ought to bomb them back to the Stone Age.

I remember being about six years old, for the first day of school, and sitting in the back of a Chrysler, pretending to cry while listening to Tracy Chapman.

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

I look forward and see myself look back.

Looking back, I now see so many similarities between my own childhood and that of my sons. My father stepped in when I needed him, and that gave me the chance for a better life. That’s what I’m doing for my boys now.

For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law.

I don’t get tired. I get beat up. You keep chopping on a tree, you need to give the tree some rest so the chlorophyll will fill back up and the tree gets its energy back.

When I went off to college in 1997, I didn’t go back and watch ‘Conan.’ I was out partying and dating women.