PAULINA PORIZKOVA

My boyfriend thinks I lost my true calling to be a librarian.

Beauty, unlike the rest of the gifts handed out at birth, does not require dedication, patience and hard work to pay off. But it's also the only gift that does not keep on giving.

I have worked every day since the age of fifteen, supporting not only myself, but also helping a sizable family when needed.

I was fired by 'America's Next Top Model' on my birthday.

I will continue to be intelligent, I vowed, no matter how beautiful I become.

When I model I pretty much go blank. You can't think too much or it doesn't work.

Now, I don't actually know the exact cut-off age where beautiful ceases and 'must have-once-been-beautiful' begins. It's true it's not forty-five. I can still get attention when I try really hard, even if it's greatly reduced.

My first recognition of age setting in was exactly on my 36th birthday. I have no idea why, on this day of all days, I looked in the mirror and realized my face no longer looked young.

Fame is an interesting phenomenon.

The real bummer of fame is that at some point you're bound to get demoted.

I have now spent over a year trying to figure where in the workplace I belong.

I used to think the word 'feminist' reeked of insecurity. A woman who needed to state that she was equal to a man might as well be shouting that she was smart or brave. If you were, you wouldn't need to say it.

I'm definitely a narcissist, and TV is fabulous for narcissists.

My name is Paulina Porizkova, and I am a feminist.

Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, and Linda Evangelista - those models got bunched together. I was always asked to be bunched in there, but I didn't want to be part of the herd. The only one I really had a problem with, though, was Naomi.

I always hear, 'Oh, she's really beautiful.' I'd die to hear, 'Oh, she's really smart.' I'm not as dumb as I look.

I've always hated modeling. It's superficial and fake, and I hate to have to care about what I look like. I get a pimple and freak. The whole business is all about selling beautiful girls' faces and bodies, so how can there be anything intelligent or nice about that except for the girl who makes money?

I'm a trash can. I eat whatever makes me happy.

From Kevyn Aucoin, I learned about the power of eyebrows. He was an eyebrow freak, and rightly so because there's nothing in your face that changes you more. You can quite visibly lift your eye with a higher-placed eyebrow, or if you thicken or thin it.

Nothing ages as poorly as a beautiful woman's ego.

I remember when I first started modeling, and I would read interviews with people. Then I would see them, and they would always say something entirely different to a crowd of people than they would say privately. I always found that really offensive.

I'm against all of us looking homogenous, where there's only one kind of a template of a person.

Reading is, hands-down, my favorite activity.

If you have really pretty skin, then you can pretty much stick on mascara and a lip cream and look great.

I think I had my first anxiety attack at the age of 10. Then it sort of varied between being so bad that I barely dared to go out to periods where it almost vanished. It's sort of like an ebb and flow thing.