Beauty is being comfortable and confident in your own skin.

Looking good is a commitment to yourself and to others. Wigs, killer heels, Pilates, even fillers - whatever works for you, honey.

Eliminating the things you love is not wellness. Wellness feeds your soul and makes you feel good.

Intelligence is sexy. Don't play dumb, especially young girls. Don't play dumb. And let people see that you are intelligent.

Life is too short not to have pasta, steak, and butter.

I suffer from low self-esteem. I had horrible self-esteem growing up. You really have to save yourself because the critic within you will eat you up. It's not the outside world - it's your interior life, that critic within you, that you have to silence.

I wasn't a major in political science for nothing, so I understood the politics of beauty and the politics of race when it comes to the fashion industry.

On a Friday night in 1983, I was in a taxi in New York riding home from dinner with friends. A drunk driver ran a red light and hit the cab, and I was thrown toward the glass partition. I tried to duck, but my face hit the glass, and the impact fractured my cheekbone, my eye socket, my collarbone and several ribs.

My ritual is cooking. I find it therapeutic. It comes naturally to me. I can read a recipe and won't have to look at it again.

I'll be truly happy when we're not counting the number of ethnically diverse models on a fashion runway or campaign, when having a representation of the entire human race is the norm and not an exception.

If I feel frustrated in a situation, I take a deep breath and walk away.

I believe in glamour. I am in favor of a little vanity. I don't rely on just my genes.

Granted, I've changed internally as I've gotten older - I take it easy, I know when to stop and take care of myself, I laugh much more and with my belly and soul - but this comes from the confidence and acceptance that comes with maturity.

I beg you, don't use the verb, 'discover', I hate it. What does it mean, that I didn't exist before?

There are highlights when you become irreplaceable as a model, like when you become a muse to designers. They look at you differently; you're not a coat hanger for hire.

I was under 18, and to leave Kenya to come to the United States, to get a passport, you had to be 18. So I lied and said I was 19 to get the passport, because otherwise, I had to have permission from my parents, and my parents would never have let me come.

The women I gravitate to are the ones who defy convention and reinvent themselves - hence, they reinvent the world around them.

One afternoon, on my way to the campus - I was majoring in political science at Nairobi University - a photographer by the name of Peter Beard stopped me in the street and asked me if I'd ever been photographed.

I like to get up around 5:30 or six - that's my favorite time of day. My family is still asleep, and the office is still closed, so I can start my day slowly.

People called me 'Iman the black model'. In my country, we're all black, so nobody called somebody else black. It was foreign to my ears.

We all want what every girl wants: to look fabulous while we're out there ruling the world.

I was born in Somalia, which is in East Africa. My parents started with nothing: poor, poor, poor. They eloped, which was unheard of in my country, when my father was 17 and my mother was 14.

I believe the universe has great plans for us. When you are young, you don't learn that.

On my 50th birthday in 2005, my discount-wielding AARP card came in the mail. I hurled it in the trash, put on something fabulous, and had a decadent meal. Just the thought of putting it in my wallet felt like a concession.

Modeling gave me so many experiences, like traveling and being exposed to global cultures, but the most valuable lesson has been working with designers who truly are visionaries in their field.

That is something that my mother instilled in me at a very young age - to know my self-worth. And I have had times again and again in the fashion industry where all of that was tested and I rose to the occasion because I was told that I am worthy and I should be able to walk away from something that is not worthy of me.

There are some people who have helped to advance me and other girls, but the fashion industry is always behind popular culture. They think they understand the zeitgeist. They don't know anything about the zeitgeist.

After the bones mended, my left eye was smaller than my right, and my eyebrow never grew back. But you know what? Big deal. I think I became beautiful after the accident. I became kinder, more aware. I gained respect for other people.

We never do Valentine's dinner, because everybody, they look. On Valentine's, imagine me and David going to a restaurant! Like, everybody's going to say, 'Did they talk? Did they hold hands?' Twenty years. We've been married twenty years!

Change makes you find your calling, your legacy, and God's divine plan for your life. Don't run from it.

I have no intention of ever writing beauty tips on how to make an African-American nose look slimmer or Asian eyes look bigger. That's degrading. Asian eyes are what's beautiful about you and what makes you different.

I'm always criticised by other Somalis and Muslims for what I'm doing as a model and married to a white man and all that.

I have a 15-year-old daughter who thinks that I always had this self confidence that I have now at the age of 60. And I always tell her that what she is going through - the low self-esteem as a teenager - that is a right of passage.

As I always said: I fell in with David Jones. I did not fall in love with David Bowie.

I speak five languages besides mine. I went to school in Egypt because girls weren't allowed to go to school in Saudi Arabia. It's very restricting, especially for girls; we're not allowed to go anywhere.

When I started modeling, they tried to pay black models less than they paid Caucasian models. I turned down those jobs because I knew what I was worth.

I was a very nerdy child. I never fit in, so I became laboriously studious.

At the end of the day, my legacy will not be modelling but my cosmetics line.

I have been a muse to Mr. Saint-Laurent, Valentino, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Versace.

When I lived in Egypt, we always wore kaftans. I had cashmere kaftans from Halston. You put on a kaftan in your backyard, and it's like you're in Ibiza.

I was studying political science; I was adamant that I was going to follow in my father's footsteps.

My looks have changed. I have laugh lines - not wrinkles.

I can enjoy what I'm engaged in and be fully present rather than planning my answers to questions while someone else is speaking or thinking about my next appointment while my current engagement is still in in progress.

People get numbed when they see picture after picture, year in and year out, of people starving.

I keep on 5 to 10 pounds above my jeans weight, as the ultimate no-filler-needed refresher, and buy a size up on jeans.

I would go to cosmetics counters and buy two or three foundations and powders, and then go home and mix them before I came up with something suitable for my undertones.

The truth was I felt ugly growing up. I only really started feeling comfortable in myself when I was 40.

There is a lot of noise out there. I don't want to follow the trend - I want to create the trend.

I don't look like a white woman. I look Somali.

I can't stand my legs, for a start, and you rarely see me in skirts.