Quotes from Alek Wek

I am so impressed by UNHCR staff who live and work side by side with the refugees. It's really remarkable.

In restaurants in my Brooklyn neighborhood, I always ask for a doggie bag to bring the leftovers home.

If my mother hadn't encouraged me, I would be nervous and feeling like I'm doing something wrong.

I used to have nightmares about the civil war when I got to England at ages 14 to 15. It took me some years to get over that.

From nine years old, I lived with fear. I saw our neighbours disappearing. I was scared that I would come home from school and my parents would not be there.

I like unique little boutique hotels, such as Blakes in London.

Beauty should not be culturally relevant; it should be universal.

When I started modeling, it was like, 'Oh, she's too dark,' and I kind of looked at them like, 'You're too daft.'

You can feel very strongly that someone doesn't like you. I think any model who didn't have the same sort of upbringing as me would find that very difficult. But I absolutely knew I was entitled. I never thought I was ugly - it never crossed my mind.

I meet and talk to women from every corner of this planet, and I can find beauty in each and every one of them.

The day you stop enjoying something is the day you should quit, if you can afford to.

I had serious psoriasis as a child - it's strange that I make my living off my looks after years of looking like a monster.

I use Johnson & Johnson! I use their baby oil gel.

At times, we take freedom for granted. We really don't know how to cherish the freedom we have until it's taken from us.

When I was growing up, my mother taught me and my sisters to celebrate each other - there was no room in our household for negativity. She taught us to embrace each other, and this was empowering for us. She also taught us the value of celebrating our differences.

There's one thing we all share: We eat to nurture ourselves, to feel stronger.

I could never understand why other kids wanted to truant - my education here gave me everything. It's the place where I really got to flourish.

It was the most exciting thing to leave secondary school and go to college, to have that freedom to study whatever I wanted.

Beauty is subjective and should not be limited to only what we see on the outside.

For me, there has never been one definition of beauty. I think we all have something to offer and when beauty shines from within, there can be no denying it

The beauty of reading is that it lets you travel in a way you could never know.

War tore my family apart.

I'm an artist at heart.

It's sometimes tiring to get off a long-haul flight and go straight to the studio for a shoot, but if you really plan everything well, you can get so much out of combining travel with work.