I don't think my brand of self-confidence and self-assuredness can come from an outside source. It's got to come from me.

To pray to this God or that God or this religion and that religion or no religion at all, that's the reason why we built America. And that is still very much what we do in this country unless you're brown.

When I was listening in on the phone call where Andre Leon Talley was saying that he was going to get my fat, black ass on the cover of a magazine. I think that - you know, Andre Leon Talley is fat and black. And it hurt my feelings. It hurt my feelings. But it also was a lesson in this is what they think, and this is what they will always think. And there's no way of being too talented or too pretty or too confident around it. People will still have their opinions.

I'm not a big fan of doing what my mother wants me to do, like any daughter.

I've always wanted a normal life, and this is what I got. Being an actress wasn't a plan at all, so what's happened to me is very strange. Life isn't very normal, even though I'm still very much a normal girl. I ride the subway, I ride the bus, and all of that. It's the people around me that have changed. I love when I go to a restaurant and I walk past, and everyone waves. That's always really funny. It's strange. It just goes to show that whatever plan you have for your life, you are wrong, a lot of times.

One day I had to sit down with myself and decide that I loved myself no matter what my body looked like and what other people thought about my body. I got tired of hating myself.

The reason why America was built is so that we would have the ability to choose who we pray to, whether we do or don't.