KELLY CUTRONE

I don't take it lightly that I brought a life into this world. They're waiting for you every day, these sweet little angels. You have to have time for them to interact on a daily basis.

Baby-carrying means your hearts are close together. It's a very intense and beautiful way to bond with your baby, very intimate. It's also easier than a stroller.

If you're 5' 6", just stay home. Don't pretend you're 5' 8" or 5' 9". If you want to be a beauty model, I guess that's fine, you can do glamour, but you're not going to do runway. If you're over 29 - 26, even - I would suggest you work regionally and not try to work nationally.

I don't have time to write a mom blog, but I'm not against it. I think it's great when women talk about things. I'm all about female empowerment. There's a lot of lonely, lost moms out there. Moms need to be encouraged to tell the truth. There's a lot of glamour mommy stuff. It's OK to get real.

If we get a girl who is bigger than a 4, she is not going to fit the clothes. Clothes look better on thin people. The fabric hangs better.

People should just express themselves and not worry about trends - try to use fashion like a compass, an indicator, examples of things that you can be. It's not to be taken so seriously. It's just clothes.

Before turning 32 is an amazing time to do radical things. You figure out who you are while you figure out who you are not.

Single motherhood is an amazing thing; it's a blessing.

If people decide thin is out, the fashion industry won't have thin models anymore. Have you spent time with fashion people? They are ruthless. They want money. And the one thing they know is people want clothes to cover their bodies. Unfortunately, most people aren't comfortable with their bodies.

Most fashion models do not look good in bikinis because they're too thin.

There are a bunch of different ways to look at the fashion industry. Is it shallow to work in fashion? Yes, it can be. But does fashion transform a woman who might feel like nothing and unimportant to glamorous and gorgeous? Yes, it does. Does it employ a huge sector of America? Yes, it does.

We see women who go out and want to look like Jennifer Aniston, and they're wearing an ill-fitting red dress and ugly gold shoes, and they've got flat hair and they can't walk.

I had the most expensive haircut you can get, and I was walking around with my hair in rollers backstage, and my hair still came out looking like I was shot out of a cannon and I had just gotten out of bed.

Society has a hyper emphasis on thin, and that trend comes from the consumers - it does not come from the fashion industry. The fashion industry needs to make money; that's what we do. If people said, 'We want a 300 pound purple person,' the first industry to do it would be fashion.

People want to express themselves - that's what fashion is for. You can go to Target and get something that Rodarte designed for $34, but would you want to go buy the higher version for $3,400? I think most people would say no.

I think between the ages of 15 and 32, don't worry about getting married, don't worry about settling down, don't worry about having a baby. Give birth to yourself.

Modeling is a very hard job. I know that sounds like a really shallow thing to say, but you have people pulling on your hair all day, telling you what to do, fitting you, telling you to bend over, hitting you, taking your shoes off, throwing you up against a wall - it's a lot. You have to really be able to handle yourself and bring something. It's not just enough to have a cute body and jump up in the air and go, "wow!"

When you're young, you don't realize that things are going to pass and things will move and shift.

You find out who you are by figuring out who and what you're not

Unless you're really going to have a serious relationship, don't bring your kids into it. Don't show your child that people come and go.

If you aren’t hearing your inner voice, it could mean you’re overburdened or not stimulated enough, or that you’ve learned to shut it off because the people around you have refused to engage it. Perhaps you’ve had a hardening of the arteries around your soul. I believe the choices we make in our lives and the people and places surrounding us increase the volume of our inner voice, decrease it, or annihilate it entirely.

A lot of people have the misconception that modeling is a glamourous job, and it can be. But ultimately if you don’t like to stay quiet, and let people tell you what to do, and fuss on you… it may not be the right fit. If you decide it’s something you’re really passionate about though, go for it!

Gather up your courage like an armful of free clothes at a McQueen sample sale and follow your inner voice wherever it takes you.

I hope that you, too, will choose to have a journey instead of just a life. Actually, I hope it's a full on expedition.

Take the years when you’re young – say, between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, before you have a mortgage or kids or anything else that needs to be fed – and go balls out on intuition and follow your dreams. Dreams won’t always take you on a straight path to destiny, but they’re usually related to what your soul wants for you. They’ll force you to ask yourself the hard questions, they’ll kick your ass, and most importantly, they’ll turn you on.