We cannot let fear and terror dictate how we live our lives, no matter what. Life is a blessing with an expiration date, and we must embrace it while we can.

I ended up going to public school in the first grade, and that's when I knew I had to be very strategic about my survival in school. I tried my best to be friends with people who were going to protect me.

I got kicked out of Catholic school, by the way, because I was too feminine. I was too feminine and I had a crush on this boy named Anthony and the nuns were not having it.

Your gender should not matter in your heart or in the way you express your personality.

I want to make 'People' magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People.

I see the human body as your soul's apartment.

In all honesty plastic surgery these days goes hand-in-hand with beauty maintenance. It's nothing new. Who I am, my body, I was not created from surgery, at all, whatsoever.

Luckily for me the public have known me before my transition and I've always had the same body type.

Drag Race' was when I was kind of confused about how I wanted to live the rest of my life and I was just having fun, a little ignorant, a little young.

Before my transition I felt trapped, and now I've been set free.

Being a woman means everything to me.

Feeling comfortable with your body as you go through a transition is not easy, and honestly, as a trans person on hormones or after surgery, you just don't really know what your results will be, how you'll finally look. Managing all of that is a challenge.

Stepping into the gym or going out to do sports is a scary thing for a trans person - you feel like everyone is looking at you.

Everyone else is following these male and female tracks that have already been set for them, but when you're trans there is no trail.

When you live this trans experience, there's a point and time in your life that you almost stop developing because you don't know where to go.

I run into a lot of ignorance and stupidity. It gets really frustrating, but you have to take yourself out of it and realize what's happening in the bigger picture.

For a long time trans people have always been a joke. Our reputation has always been the bottom of the barrel and it's not fair.

It would be pretty amazing for Victoria's Secret to be that huge corporation that embraces trans women. We shop there as well.

Trans women are a part of the female population and I think that they deserve a respectful representation.

For any model in this industry, you never know if you're going to get work. You never know if people are going to relate to you, and embrace you. And then being trans is kind of like - I hate to say it - but it's kind of like a setback.

My life isn't really that different from a biological female.

It just so happens that I'm trans. It shouldn't have to be like 'Oh, that's the trans model selling the trans clothes.'

Trans people are beautiful. It's a different kind of beauty, and it should be recognized and respected.

Beauty is the ability to utilize the tools provided in order to showcase your spirit in order to show your true soul.