We're constantly getting these messages to mind our own business and look the other way if we want to be well liked, to not tell the truth or speak our mind or say anything too intense. Well, I'm telling you here that this approach not only makes you party to other people's crimes against themselves but is a prescription for mediocrity and delusion

But while my inner voice was clearly telling me I was at my core an entrepreneur, it's inconvenient to decide at twenty-three that you can't really work for other people.

The only dream I ever had was the dream of New York itself, and for me, from the minute I touched down in this city, that was enough. It became the best teacher I ever had.

Stop sharing your dreams with people who try to hold you back, even if they're your parents.

Society has a hyper emphasis on thin, and that trend comes from the consumers - it does not come from the fashion industry. The fashion industry needs to make money; that's what we do. If people said, 'We want a 300 pound purple person,' the first industry to do it would be fashion.

If you aren’t hearing your inner voice, it could mean you’re overburdened or not stimulated enough, or that you’ve learned to shut it off because the people around you have refused to engage it. Perhaps you’ve had a hardening of the arteries around your soul. I believe the choices we make in our lives and the people and places surrounding us increase the volume of our inner voice, decrease it, or annihilate it entirely.

I'm never hard on people just because they annoy me on the show. I'm not emotional when I'm professional. Do I think there are people on the show who need to go home sooner than they do? Yes. I do. but I'm there to be professional and to be a judge and to give them my advice and my help and I take my job really seriously.