“Growing up in Jamaica, the Pentecostal church wasn’t that fiery thing you might think. It was very British, very proper. Hymns. No dancing. Very quiet. Very fundamental.”

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.

When you start in that [model] business the rules are imposed upon you, but when you stay in the business long enough the rules could be broken.

If you were running a solar company you may be okay – you may be able to keep growing. The question for physics is: Can you grow fast enough to begin to catch up with the damage?

You know growing up in Sweden meant we had a lot of rain when we played tennis. We were taught on clay courts but because of the weather, we had to go indoors a lot.

I lived to play basketball. Growing up as a kid, Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics were my favorite team. The way they played, the teamwork, the sacrifice, the commitment, the joy, the camaraderie, the relationship with the fans.

When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn’t come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards.

The clock never stops, never stops, never waits. We’re growing old. It’s getting late.

We’re only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby.

Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish nuns, I was brought up to revere rules. Without rules, there was only anarchy.

We all get misinformation growing up about people who are different from ourselves.