“If people could walk around in suits of energy, that would be cool. Other than that, I don’t think men should wear spandex.”

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.

I’m so used to being within 10 minutes of my family.

What do you do with your best friend? You do nothing.

I feel shy when people are fussing on me.

If I wasn’t an actress, I’d be a chef. I’d love to open a restaurant.

I didn’t have a boyfriend until I was 17. There were boys at school that I would find out later had a crush on me but I was too shy to talk to them.

I thought it was a fun thing to do, but we stepped outside my brother’s school and he was mortified!

I take a cooking class everywhere I travel. I find it’s the best way to get to know a culture.

My dream as a passionate cook has been to go to Le Cordon Bleu. Never could my most incredible dream have lived up to the experience.

I kind of do the drawing with the painting in mind, but it’s very hard to guess at a size or a color and all the colors around it and what it will really look like.

I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.

I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it’s more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you.

Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace.

Sometimes in a hostile situation you stick around because hostility itself is important.

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa around, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn

Until we do something about wild dogs, kangaroos competing for pasture, your fortunes in life aren’t gonna turn around.