As a young girl, I was much more preoccupied by my flaws. Everyone teased me because of my long, skinny neck. To hide my so-called deformity, I was wearing a turtleneck when I was 3! Yet my neck is probably my best asset. At the end of the day, what counts is the entire package.

My worst year. The only thing that I know for a fact now is that if it's really a bad day, then I draw the curtains, and I lay in bed. There is no way of dealing with grief. And I have no idea. This year I had double of them, my mother and my husband. I just take it one day at a time.

If I say something about David [Bowie], I get 1000 tweets, if I say something about my business just a few! The more personal, the better.

When 9/11 happened, 12 of our neighborhood firemen were killed. I looked around at the country that had adopted me and I became an American.

Men can get jobs from one country to another, they can get in. But the people who always fell through the cracks were women and children, especially when you are displaced. I've always said, 'I am the face of a refugee.'

I come from Somalia. We start working young, and we understand that kind of life. I would be bored to death not doing anything creative.

The one thing my mother instilled in me, well both my parents but specifically my mother - I come from a Muslim country where boys were more wanted than girls so she always made me feel that there is nothing that I couldn't do as well as the boys if not better.