I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.
Posterity is something I'm a big fan of because that's how you leave your legacy. Not to sound pompous, but just to be truthful.
I don't like people being cautious and tentative and choosing their words carefully around me because I'm a dwarf.
The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country - I know, because I am one of them.
I have always been clear about what I wanted to do and who I wanted to dress. However, you need that business sense to help direct your talent. Because at the end of the day, you are selling clothes, and that is the reality which we live in.
I'm officially disabled, but I'm truly enabled because of my lack of limbs. My unique challenges have opened up unique opportunities to reach so many in need.
There are so many different narrative traditions across the world, and each of those traditions has evolved dramatically over time. Once I understood that, I felt truly free; I could write and invent the way I wanted to because there never has been only one way to tell a good story.
The larger the audience the better. The more pockets in the world, the more interesting and exciting because it just makes it that much more liberating. This makes it that much more liberating for the various facets of creativity to be explored.
The people that call me to play on records call me because they think that I will suit their music. And the people whose music I suit are by and large people that I'm a fan of.
I don't like to sound immodest, but I believe in what I can do. Sometimes it's been frustrating because I haven't gotten to bat; if you're on the bench, and an unimaginative person doesn't see you as right for a certain role, you don't get the chance to hit the home run.
You don't come to work going, 'Oh my God, I've got all this money I have to worry about'. You come to work going, 'I need more time and more money'. Because whatever resources you're given, you're always trying to push the envelope.
Oh, I laugh hard every day. I mean, my husband is Will Smith! I'm telling you, that's one of the joys of being married to him. My life full of laughter. Thank God I have him. My life is full of laughter because of that man.
I've never been one to make plans, because I never wanted to disappoint myself.
To be honest with you, I literally don't even know how to style my hair unless I'm doing an event because I rely on hair stylists.
I would not hesitate to say I was addicted to the Internet in the first two years. It can be addictive, and things not taken in moderation have negative effects. But the alarmism around 'Facebook is changing our brains' strikes me as a kind of historical trick. Because we now know from brain science that everything changes our brains.
As a comedian, I don't know if they're laughing because it's funny or if they're laughing at me because I'm not funny. And I'm thinking, 'Who cares? They're laughing.' If you go on stage, and they're laughing at you full-on for 60 minutes? You know, whatever puts them in the seats.
The Italians are very unmusical. If I go to a Protestant church in London or Amsterdam or listen to a black choir, I hear four-part harmony. Italians could never do that. In Italy, we all have to sing the melody because we cannot harmonise.
It's nice to be in a situation where the two books that I write for a sort of regular monthly income are also works that I enjoy immensely, rather than them being some kind of bread and butter, do it because you have to do it.
I don't even like to go out onto the streets sometimes because I can't get anything done. People want pictures and autographs all the time.
If I went to a psychiatrist, it would be a long session. I've always thought that I do have a number of issues that probably need dealing with, because I am quite odd in some ways.
Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.
I always was fascinated with China, because I was born in Europe, and for us, China had this fascination and mystery. The first time I came here was in 1989. They were on bicycles, and the speed of the growth has been incredible.
All my life people have made fun of me because I was so skinny. They kind of made me feel bad about it sometimes. I worried that maybe people will think I am really anorexic.
You do stand-up because you have to do it. If you're doing it to become 'famous,' you're wrong. If you're doing it to become a millionaire, you're doing it for the wrong reasons. In 2003, I was flat broke. I'd been doing stand-up for 14 years at that point. I loved it and just kept at it.
It's interesting because when you're in a show for a year, your life really isn't your own for that whole period.
My own interest in art was because of my mother. My father didn't like contemporary art, so he didn't give her large sums to spend. So, she began buying prints and drawings. During my school days, I remember sitting in on many of the early meetings.
From the time I was very young, maybe five or six, I thought a lot about being an actress. I didn't tell my friends about my ambitions, though, especially when I got older, because I thought they would not receive them well. I never talked about what I wanted to do.
It irritates me that everybody concentrates on Gawker, because it's just one of 15 sites and it doesn't even get the most traffic. It's a significant site, but it's not what we are.
The only time we got sugary cereal was when my mom went away for the weekend and she bought us Frosted Flakes because she wanted us to behave. Otherwise, we were eating shredded wheat, granola, or Grape Nuts.
I remember a distinct moment when it was my junior year of college, and the content I was making was changing and not really myself, and I tried to switch back to just putting me out there. I'm happy that happened really early in my career, because that was before I started doing podcasts or writing.
So you can go to college on Pell Grants - maybe I should not be telling anybody this because it's turning out to be the welfare of the 21st century.
My father could have been deported because on his immigration application he said that he was a printer, obviously because he didn't want them to be checking his writings.
I basically have my life today as a result of what I did as a child. What did I miss out on? Yeah, I missed not hanging out at shopping malls, I guess, but that is not a big deal because you don't get a medal for that.
Churches know more about poverty than any government will ever know, because we're dealing with the poor every day.
I can't even consider the prospect of grandchildren because I don't know if there will be anything left for them on Earth. That's how serious the problem is. We can't drink the water or breathe the air, and we're all dying from some sort of cancer. How many generations can sustain that? It frightens me terribly.
People might say paper is dead or dying, but actually, it's not at all. It's just more rarified. The choice to send paper has more meaning because of the fact that you don't have to.
