“I like working until the morning, so I can see the day and then I like to go to sleep and then get up before sunset. But I love the energy of the morning.”

There will always be a replacement coming along very soon – a newer version, a crazier version, a louder version. So if you haven’t got a long-term plan, then you are merely a passing phase, the latest trend, yesterday’s event.

Whatever one is creating, one has to stick to one’s guns and just do it. That is all. Put your foot down and do not let your work be compromised.

I think I’m doing a service to black women by portraying myself as a sex machine. I mean, what’s wrong with being a sex machine, darling? Sex is large, sex is life, sex is as large as life, so it appeals to anyone that’s living, or rather it should.

I like dressing like a guy. I love it. When I was modeling I used to do pictures where I would dress up like my little brother. No makeup and I looked like a boy.

I only started getting into furs when the designers I liked started making them.

I’m too vain, one of my biggest sins, but it saved me; I can see what excess does.

Models are there to look like mannequins, not like real people. Art and illusion are supposed to be fantasy.

That’s what they do in Argentina. Have a little wine and talk. Then have some coffee and talk. Then, go back to the wine.

When I started modelling, I’d raise my arms and it was all muscle and all the other models had nothing. Really, everybody thought I was a man. I don’t have to do much to have muscles. It’s just genetic.

I like to think of myself as a positive person. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had a child.

I’m not as impatient as I used to be. I used to hit people if I didn’t like what they were saying. Just lash out. ‘Bam – shut up! Hahahah!’ I was terrible.

I didn’t think I had a voice at all, and I still think of myself as an interpreter of songs more than a singer. I thought it was too deep; people thought I was a man. I had a very strong Jamaican accent, too; the accent really messed me up for auditions.

I’m still shocked every time I see snow. The first bit of snow each year… I stay up and I watch it. And then I go out and pick it up and eat it and move around in it.

I was the only black girl at my junior high school. I had an afro, a Jamaican accent, I looked really old.

Now when I enter a carriage, it almost empties. But there’s always one brave enough to stay.

We’re not perfect; we all have things that people might not like to see, and I like to show my faults.

It is sort of weird being honored for the worst day of your life.

We have warm open days and sunshine in Carolina. Much is denied us. But we have, we have. And an attitude is more powerful than any circumstance.

The thing about acting is that it’s fairly random. At the end of the day you take what drifts past you or what’s given to you.

It’s a good day when a goddess gets on the school-bus with you.

All of the important public issues of the day have, at some point.

By the grace of God and with His help, I shall one day be a Liszt in technique and a Mozart in composition

That’ll be the day when I die.

As Cole left school that day with Peter, they stopped beside the bulldog statue. “You two are wrecking our school!” shouted one of the jocks walking by. “