It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience.

I have always loved children. I've been fantasizing about motherhood since I was probably 2 ½. I loved to babysit my cousins, and nieces, you know.

Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I'd been starved for images of myself. I'd grown up watching a lot of American TV.

What's becoming very obvious to me is that fashion is art.

I come from a loving, supportive family, and my mother taught me that there are more valuable ways to achieve beauty than just through your external features. She was focused on compassion and respect, and those are the things that ended up translating to me as beauty.

I loved duping my parents; I liked manipulating them. It was a way for me to stand out. It was fun.

I went to the Independent Spirit Awards and won.