Models from Germany

"I would say the time has not yet come. I rebel against the present, whenever it is, because I have not seen any change, other than oppositions grow stronger. I would be a communist if it was more anarchist. Otherwise, I see only everything as an absurdity, so I can laugh and cry. I have lived in a continuation, from birth and growing towards death in a chain that cannot end. I don't see this decade then that decade. The same things happen in different guises. I am bohemian but at one time you would call me a hippie or a punk. I remain a bohemian whatever you call me. So maybe I am locked in the fifties. But I have never desired to grow up from my world as a child, which is when things are most clear and utopian. They are clear because you are at the center and you see all around you. When you get older you lose your sight … I lost something of my childishness when people around me start dying. Four of my family died within a year."

"I have a habit of leaving places at the wrong time, just when something big may have happened for me."

"You could say it like was like a fairy tale at the time; Andy would be the good fairy, and Jim would play the giant, Brian would be the witch, Paul McCartney would be the frog who turns into a prince, no, it would have to be the other way round. Well, it didn't seem like a fairy tale at the time. It was a lot of hassle. But I learned a lot of things, and I began to compose my own songs."

"I think he was the first man I met who was not afraid of me in some way. We were very similar, like brother and sister. Our spirits are similar. We were the same height and the same age, almost … He was well read and he introduced me to William Blake and also the English Romantic poets who came after him. Jim liked Shelley. I preferred Coleridge. In fact, he is my favoured poet of all time. Did you know they were all drug addicts? Coleridge was addicted to opium. It is better to be addicted to opium than to be addicted to money."

"Jim Morrison tells me that people are looking at the streets while I am looking at the moon. I do not feel connected enough [with the issues] to throw stones at a policeman. I want to throw stones at the whole world."

"I don't have a sense of time. Time is timeless to me, and I'm not in a hurry to get older. I mean, if I were worried about time, all the time, it would be terrible."

"Cease to know or to tellOr to see or to be your ownHave someone else's will as your ownHave someone else's will as your own."

"You are beautiful and you are alone."

"Often the adolescent plagueReward your graceConfuse your hunger capture the fake..."

"Banish the faceless reward your graceBanish the faceless reward your grace."

"He came your way And when he had to go There were roses growing in the snow Silently you'll go to the shadow of your soul And you know that it was like this before we had to go You will never see these lights Glowing in your nights Until you feel this way."

"With every moon it is as though you're getting closer to your soul And then you go alone and with no fear Then you will know That it was like this before we had to go And you will find that you were blind Until you saw these lights glowing in your nights."

"You will never see these lightsGlowing in your nights If you don't know And there are roses growing in the snow."

"John Cale did a really interesting version of Heartbreak Hotel, in a minor key. It's incredibly suicidal. I mean you could never believe that that song could turn out to be such a downer as that... Nico did Deutschland Über Alles, which was very good... and she did The End by The Doors, which is the one they put on the album... Nico doing The End was so chilling, it really was. It was incredible. She invests it with so many levels of meaning I didn't hear in the Doors' one. She underplays it... there's just the harmonium, me playing synthesizer— almost doubling the harmonium part— and her singing... which is just like a rich, kind of non-specific miasma of sound..."

"Of course, it's her own sexuality that she's denying", he continued. Did I know that she'd been raped as a teenager in Berlin? I didn't. Nico was working as a temp for the U.S. Air Force. A black American Sergeant had raped not only her, but other girls under his employ. She'd kept quiet about it, but he was found out and court-marshalled. She had to testify for the prosecution at his trial. He was sentenced to death and shot. Nico was 15. "Not only does she have to carry the horror of the rape but the secret guilt of somehow being complicit, by her testimony, in his execution. Sex for Nico....is irrevocably associated with punishment."

"Supermodels, like we once were, don't exist any more."

"In this job an illusion of beauty is sold which doesn’t really exist like that. It’s like a work of art, an act. I cry in front of the camera but am not really sad. I’ve just come from a job, am made-up and made to look beautiful with fantastic clothes and hair and nails all done."

"When I saw him, I was like, wow! He is different and so tall and dark and just handsome. I saw the package — and I mean the whole package, literally. I was like, "That is a man.""

"I have the most romantic husband. I do."

"I know a lot of people talk about Seal's bicycle shorts, but it is the truth! That is what he was wearing the first time I met him and I was overwhelmed."

"I just think if you have an emotion and you let that go that moment might pass. If you don't open the door for the person to come in, it would have just been like, "Nice to meet you — goodbye.""

"My parents were free about nudity, and we are too. I’d like our children to feel unashamed of whatever shape they are. People should worry about other things."

"We went somewhere very nice for dinner — it was very good but I can't tell you exactly what we did. It would be too naughty and you can’t run it anyway. It would just be bloop bleep bloop bloop bleep. But it was a very good first date."

"Sexy for me is a curvy woman — doesn't have to be skinny, which I hate anyway. I'm glad [the fashion industry] is changing slowly a little bit now to get more into the boobs and hips again."

"For me the most important thing was always that you have something in mind that you want to do, that you enjoy doing, because a lot of people have a job, but they're not happy. I think you have to think about what it is you really want to do in life and pursue that, and do it with fun; have a smile on your face, because then you're happy. You're happy and you can be open, you can be nice with people, and you have a different appearance and feeling of life than when you are in a job you hate. So for me that was always the most important thing."

"I think that everybody is beautiful in his or her own way. If you smile a lot and are confident, then you are a gorgeous person. I don't know whether my looks come from God. I'm not really religious. I don't really know what I am. I'm just trying to be a good person. I am who I am."

"I have a woman's body: I have hips, I have boobs, I have a butt. There is nothing I can change about those things even if I lose weight. You have to learn to accept your body and like your body. But, it's true, when I started modeling people were always telling me that I had to change. They told me to cut my hair because long hair is not versatile enough. And they gave me this stuff to put in my water. They said: "Drink this and then you won't be so hungry, dah-dee-dah-dee-dah..." I said: "OK, great," but I never took any of it."

"I think that you have to do whatever feels good for you. As a woman, you should feel glamorous, beautiful and confident. You should be unique. For me, if something doesn't move you in that direction, then why do it? I have considered doing Playboy. I have had offers on the table many times. But then, it has to work the way I want it to. I mean, I have no problem being naked at all — I come from a place where I am used to running around naked. But you still have to feel confident and beautiful about it, and I had a checklist of how I wanted certain things and they wanted other things, so in the end, we didn't agree."

"In Germany—and this started with a newspaper headline — they call us “the Patchwork Family.” I was, like, Hmm, is this an insult or is this positive? I talked to Seal about it, and we’re, like, it’s actually kind of great — we’re all different shades and we came together and we all love each other. They may call it black and white, but I’m not white, I’m a shade of brown and so is our daughter, Leni. She’s the lightest, then it’s me, then it’s our son, and then it’s Seal. So I think, Hey, it’s actually kind of nice to have a 'patchwork family.'"

"I jumped into the water with 45 sharks without a cage in the Bahamas for a Discovery Channel show. That was a really good experience. I'm not saying that everyone should swim with sharks, but sometimes you have to jump over your own shadow in order to learn something that you will never forget for the rest of your life. Then you know you can conquer your fears."

"Fashion shows have never been my thing. I don't look thin enough for the runway. The other girls were always much taller and skinnier. But I've never starved myself or done crazy things just to be thin like a rail."

"People in the business always say, "You look fabulous." You get that all the time and it kind of goes in one ear and out the other because most of the time they just say that to make you feel good. It's nice when you hear it from an ordinary person and then I appreciate it."

"I'm a very driven person. I'm always going after my goals. You just get up in the morning and kick yourself in the butt. I'd like to show people that they can have that same drive to go where they want to go. It's up to you and not to anybody else."

"I always think, Look at how people were before they were pregnant. If you were a toned, healthy, energetic person, most likely you will be like that again. A lot of people come to me, and they’re like, "Will I look like you after I have the baby?" And I say, "Well, how were you before?" You can’t kid yourself."

"If you love what you do, you can balance and you can juggle (work and family). You have to set your priorities straight. You can't just work, work, work. Because then all of a sudden, you don't have a family...then why did you work so much when you're all by yourself in the end? So for me, I always wanted to have a family, for me that was the most important thing, and I found a man that wanted to have that with me."

"[In America] people are a little bit more scared to show their bodies. I grew up different. Nudity was a common thing. We went camping on nude beaches in Italy. When my parents were still sleeping, I'd just go outside and run to the beach without anything on."

"My philosophy is that, in life, you have to want something. If you just say "la-la-la" and go through life without a goal, nothing will happen."

"I know from people I work with, that people say "I want to have Heidi’s career," and my friends are like, "but she also works very hard." It's the truth! It's not as if I sit back and watch things fly onto my plate. I went for a lot of the things. (Success) doesn't happen by waiting for things to happen because there are other people who are hungry. The early bird catches a worm."

"I dont think it makes a difference if you have children or you don't have children. I think it's all in the head about how you feel and, I don't know, I always like to be active and work out and eat right and just be active so I never see it as, oh when you're a mom you can't be sexy or you cant be in lingerie anymore looking good."

"A size zero? I've never heard of that. That didn't exist when I was growing up. When did that start? What does it mean? It means a person is not there, no? It makes no sense."

"Modelling is a job. For girls who want to be successful it's not something they should approach lightly. You should be professional, show up on time, prepare, and earn your money. Girls should also be aware of what they're expected to do at a photo shoot in terms of nudity, since there is often that kind of pressure — especially when you're just starting out and trying to make your mark. I also tell them they have to get a thicker skin. You have to handle criticism. All that stuff. A lot of people are looking at you and judging you. That's the nature of the job."

"For me, life is about enjoying yourself because you only live once. We should try to make the most of things and follow our dreams."

"I always treated modeling as a business and I've always been very organized. From the very start, I would keep clippings of my magazine spreads and ask my agency to find out where my photo shoots were being published. I also think I had an advantage in that I was more centered and wasn't into partying and living the high life. I had fun, but I was reasonable about it!"

"I'm never uncomfortable being naked. I don't have a problem with my body."

"I don’t know why he said that. Maybe he wanted to be in the paper? Maybe he doesn’t understand what I do? It’s bizarre to me that he says he doesn’t know who I am because he’s dressed me in the past. I’ve worn Karl Lagerfeld. Not even Chanel—his line. Lagerfeld doesn’t just send random things everywhere, so it was a big thing for me [to wear his label] to the CFDA Awards a few years ago. I don’t know how he missed that, when he dressed me that time. But you know, it’s cool. People can say whatever they want to say. You can’t please everybody, and you can’t live your life wanting to please everybody either."

"You have to just do your thing. As long as you don't hurt anybody along the way."

"You can’t look at Hollywood and blame it, you have to make up your own mind whether you want to be fit, or super skinny. You can’t blame other people. It’s your own choice and if you have children, it is up to the parent to educate your children so they are healthy and they don’t go into a direction of anorexia or obesity. It is up to you as a parent, it is hard to feed children right. I deal with it on a daily basis; it is much harder to make sure they eat right."

"Nowadays children look at everyone in the magazines and they want to be a basketball star or on a television show, but there is only so many people who can do those things and not that you shouldn’t aim or dream for these things, but there are so many other fantastic jobs. So it’s good to talk about how to get there and how difficult it is to get there."

"I think if you put a smile on people's faces, they give that back to you."

"I told Seal pretty early. He was there from the very beginning. He's always been Dad."

"If we don't take that time (to be romantic), then it's karate, then it's ballet, and then there's Christmas, and then my husband is flying off to tour around the world."

"Models have a sell-by date. There are certain jobs I don't do anymore, like the young, sexy, cute things for teenagers, or even 25-year-old girls. I go in a different bracket now."

"They're photographs by Adam Fuss. He's an artist. They are beautiful, artistic photos - more silhouettes than anything else. It's not like, "Hey, Mom and Dad are naked, come check it out!" But if I go to the bathroom and my kid walks in, I'm not going to be like, "Oh my God! Close the door!" They see their parents naked all the time. We are not ashamed."

"My lifestyle is very healthy. I eat very healthy and we cook at home. We don't eat out a lot, we don't go out for fast food a lot -- and it's the same with the children. I'm a pain in the butt with my children. I want them to eat right. They hate me for it a lot of times, but I don't want to make my life easy and skip those roles that I feel like I have to have as a mother."

"I don’t think that it's like an obligation because you are known or anything like that. But if I was Heidi Klum still living in Bergisch Gladbach, no one would listen to me, and no one would care. So I think that it’s great that because of what I do I can raise awareness. You know, I would still want to do it if I was still in my hometown. It’s just that no one would care."

"In terms of being naked, I'm not very prudish."

"When I won the competition, I had just been offered a job as a designer in Düsseldorf, so that’s probably what I’d be doing now. It can be fascinating to consider how your life might have turned out, like in the movie Sliding Doors, but I’m too busy to look back."

"I think my business is about people making you feel self-conscious. All eyeballs are on you when you're a model, when you're on the runway or in front of the camera, you're always looked up and down and back up, so that comes with the territory. But at the end of the day I feel like my parents gave me a good solid foundation. I know who I am and there are things I wouldn't do. I wouldn't starve myself, I also never wanted to chop my hair off when people said I should do this and I should do that. And I always knew who I was and said they're going to book me like this or not book me. I don't want to be a role model because I'm just a person too, so I can have mistakes and some people don't like what I do. People always push this role model thing on you. I just want to be a good role model for my children."

"Because of my job, I learned to be confident a little earlier than most. People pick you apart when you're in the public eye - you're wearing the wrong shoes or you have ugly nail polish on or they're wondering if you got your boobs done - so you have to be a strong person right away."

"I've never gone on a diet to lose weight. I have taken a few things out of my diet, like pasta and white bread, which are not so necessary for the body. Right now I'm looking at apple strudel and brownies with whipped cream. Do I want to eat all that? Yes. I've been wanting it all day but I'm not going to do it. I'll have something else."

"I am not that person who walks in a room with my nose in the sky. I smile at people when I meet them, and I like photos of me when I'm smiling because they show my personality. I am always trying to have fun."

"My mom gave me a lot of advice. I would say the biggest advice is to always have fun. Treat people well, have respect for everybody and, therefore, you will be respected. Have fun in your life!"

"I learned from working in the fashion world that if I have a day when I feel slapped in the face, or if someone has been mean, I just have to get back up and it will be another day. I think about what I'm grateful for. I look at my kids and my husband and think, Wow, I'm a really lucky person."

"The ultimate beauty secret for a woman getting older is, Don't be too thin! When you are just muscle, you end up being gaunt in the face, and that makes you look older by 5 or 10 years. I don't think of getting older as looking better or worse; it's just different. You change, and that's OK. Life is about change. I don't have anxiety about it, so I'm not running to get Botox. Maybe that will change, but I don't think so. I feel comfortable in my skin and comfortable with aging, so I think it's OK that I get wrinkles."

"I never really have any major resolutions. I do try to be a good person, to be a good mom, to be a good wife, I don't really start the year off on January 1, 'Oh, I am now going to make a big change.' I try every day when I wake up to be good to the people around me."

"The trick is that you have to stay naked. You must be naked."

"A pair of black Louboutin's... and that's it!"

"If you pick something you actually enjoy doing, you have fun every day of your life."

"Ask me again when I'm 65, but I'm proud to be able to say, in this day and age, I haven't done anything. Everyone has a view of what's pretty and what's not pretty, and it just doesn't look pretty to me."

"I was too curvy and too busty and a little too short. And I was a little bit self-conscious about it. But I was by no means heavy, I just — well, you have hips and boobs, and that's it. Haute couture, you don't really see girls with big boobs. And I always wanted first to be a model. So I had to say, "OK, you're going to find other things to do in this industry, or it's maybe not my industry.""

"I think you just have to be comfortable in your skin. But, I'm a nudist in any case. I've never had a problem with my body and I don't really care what people think, so I have bottoms on and pretty much go topless, or also when we shoot - we did a lot of nude pictures today, too - it doesn't bother me in the slightest."

"Have fun—a smile is the most beautiful thing on a woman."

"I have never met a man like my father. He is so mad, terrible and vehement at the same time. Because of him, I never knew anything other than passion. When I began to meet other people I saw that it wasn’t normal."

"If I were an animal, I would be a fish or a bird. It's the peace and beauty of ocean, the silent language of it. It seems like a womb, protective. The sky too. I love all colors, but blue mainly, because it's transparent like the water and the sky."

"The period I'm going through now is a transition. You know when you're in the middle of puberty and you don't know what to do with yourself? I feel like that now, It will be a transition into something very good if I work hard enough at it. But it is a frustration and an emptiness and a lack of confidence now. I feel young and I feel old. I feel twenty years below zero and old. I put a lot of demands on myself to know this and that, to be here and there. I've got to really do one thing at a time all the way. I've got stop wanting to know and do everything at the same time. It's like you have a home stuffed with beautifull things - statues, books, lamps - that give a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and you have nothing. And then you go into a house where there isn't a great light and one object and you could sit there all your life studying it, and one discovery about the object would give birth to the next, and it would be totally fulfilling. Right now my life is cluttered and you can't run away from it. If I weren't attached to this body I would have left it long ago."

"I always fall in love with someone while I'm working in a film. It's a joy to get up in the morning. Sometimes when I'm not infatuated, I just make things up in my mind. Making a film is such an intense thing. You're eliminating everything in your life and you're absorbed into the world of the movie. It's exciting. It's like somebody saying you have an illness and you only have this short time to live. Then you live it that life is over with. Good-bye. You never see any of the people again. But meanwhile you have this short life in which you can do and feel and fantasize about all kinds of things because you know it will soon be over. So I always fall in love. Then you slip out of it, like a skin you take off, and you're naked and you're cold but it's exciting because there is going to be something new. My relationships are as intense and as giving and as short as my parts are. I would pump everything into a person. I would give my left arm that it was for life, but it dies so shortly. And when it dies, it doesn't even leave traces. The relationship vanishes into space. When I finish a part, it's the same feeling. I leave people and people leave me, I leave parts and parts leave me. I say it is 'the flow of life,' but it affects me terribly. Every once in a while I have such a breakdown, question every move."

"I idealize my directors. It's true. I need to. I need to. I don't know if idealizing is a bad thing or good thing. But I just want to get up in the morning and work to get a glimpse of thing of his eyes searching things inside of me. For some I want to go to hell and to heaven. It hasn't happened with everybody. There are certain people I idealize. Others are very good, and I want to please them, too, but in a different sense of the word."

"In the past directors have always portrayed me as this strange girl who hardly talks but who has a great effect on people. They don't give me a chance to do something more, let more out of what is inside of me. The time is only coming up now when I feel I can open up. I have been almost a creature of these directors' imaginations. I guess that is what they saw in me and why they picked me. But if I was an object at moments in movies, I was also alive. I wasn't dead. I always gave everything I could while I worked. I could give maybe more today, but I gave what I could then."

"Nudity in a picture is such a delicate thing, and it is so rarely right. But it can be right if it's done by people with beautiful vision and if it becomes part of the melody of the situation. The body, after all, is a beautiful and secret thing."

"I don't understand acting. Sometimes I only understand it while I'm doing it, and sometimes not even then. You cannot study acting. You can get new tools to use..., but you can't become something by studying, you just can't. You can become better. But some people can't even do that. They are best when they are very young because they are restless. When the restlessness settles, the acting goes. When acting goes for me, I'll just stop and do something else. I hope I always will get better and better, meaning bigger and bigger and more courageous and deeper and lighter and more flexible. But when it's time to go, it's time to go. There is no use trying to ride a wooden horse."

"My mother and I have this really strangely close relationship. No other relationship can come close to it. It's frightening. Even when I'm in a relationship with a man, I compare it to my relationship with my mother. She is a friend, but she is still a mother, and everything a mother needs to be, she is. She is really observing and caring and doesn't want anything but giving because it's her joy. Even when I can't bear anybody, not even myself, she 's like the sun coming up to me. She dedicated all her life to me. Sometimes I feel that she gave her life to me and now it's my job to maybe take her somewhere. But what is it she doesn't know? She knows things I couldn't begin to know. Yet she is so fresh with ideas which I already take for granted. She sometimes wakes me up and says, 'Don't you see?' and she makes me see and feel things again. Nobody, not my father, not anybody, has done that for me, except movies."

"My father loved us so much, but he's the kind of person that chokes you. He doesn't leave you your own pleasures. If you think or feel one way and he feels the other way, he won't accept it. My mother wanted to work. People wanted her to do movies, but he just wanted her to be at home, be a mother, be a wife, be this Venus, this planet he could land on anytime."

"My father is so expressive that things he feels even before they are thoughts are visible on his skin. He heats up. What other people work on, he was born with. He's got eyes like the sky and like hell at the same time. They're so clear and blue and alert and serious, and then they're like hell. That's how he is. He is total light and pureness and then hell. He gives totally or he gives nothing. He is like the sun, then an iceberg, then nonexistent, and then the sun again. Which is fine. It's a lot better than most people are."

"If you get typecast, it's up to you to break that. Since I started real young, getting roles where they would ask me to take my clothes off, I would get those [types of] scripts over and over. The fact that I'm still here and working... I don't know if it's so much because of my performances or something else."

"The years went by so fast and, even though I've had children, which makes me feel I've lived a long time, I feel I didn't really grow up. I want to fulfill the desire I have to do things that are beautiful and meaningful."

"I'm going to make myself seem more mysterious because I'm really not so mysterious. Or, if I am, it's because everybody is a mystery. Now that I'm older, at least I can be more amused by what people said."

"When he died I had a moment of grief that lasted about five minutes. It was very intense, then never again. Not because I forced myself, but I think it was because he caused us too much pain."

"It started out as a light romance, but he became demanding and possessive."

"I think we were better as friends than husband and wife."

"He was always there when I needed him and someone I could talk too and argue with. In a Freudian way he was the father I never had. For me, partners were like father figures most of the time."

"A thriller is supposed to thrill you! So it's the plotting of the movie and the unveiling of the story which is important."

"With the passage of time, I guess my priorities have changed and so have the parameters on the basis of which I decide to do a film. Today I look for a lot more mature roles, with a lot of substance. I want to do different things, or rather -- things differently."

"For everything that you do, there are people who appreciate your work and then there are those who don't. I think very few people have the guts to be sure of what they are doing, believe in it, and then go ahead and do it, irrespective of what people think."

"He sees things from every point of view. He's an extraordinarily hard worker. I think he's worked for a long time, in every field. He's talented, passionate and has had an incredibly hard and full life that I'm sure you know about. I can not imagine myself having some of his experiences. You either swim or drown, but some like him go on and make every moment important. I think that's what he does."

"I would do anything to put him behind bars for life. I am glad he is no longer alive."

"You have to be strong with Nastassja. Otherwise she will devour you."

"To understand Nastassja, you must look at her parents.. Her mother is a poet, her father was possessed."

"I don't try to justify myself or defend myself. I've always done what I had to. She should know for herself that I love her, that I've loved her always, always. Those years you can't replace by words, though. After years and years, words get weaker and weaker."

"I saw Stay as You Are and Tess only. I didn't ask her if she saw every movie I did. I could never think about that. Why do I have to see every movie she did? Why? Sometimes she did movies with people I was bored by. I don't care about this or that director. So if she is so beautiful in a movie, it is because of her, not a director. So why should I see the movie then? As long as I am not blind, I don't need a dog to see. If I am blind, maybe I would like the dog to lead me. I am not blind. I don't have to see her movies. I know my child."

"The truth is that I wasn't there with her when she needed me. Now she see's how I love Nanhoï and she believes that I can't love her as much as I love my son. That I've never loved her like this. I try to tell her that she's distorting everything in her pain and not seeing the truth. That I've painfully missed her since our separation and that I've never stopped loving her. But even though she gradually calms down, I have a feeling she doesn't believe me."

"From what I was able to glean, the only excuse for his domestic outbursts sprang from his daughter, Nastassja Kinski, being on a roll. After Polanski's Tess, she became the new darling of Hollywood, courted, caressed and cast wherever she went. I believe Klaus was actually envious of his own offsping."

"There is something so ready to run about her. She almost looks like a young deer with those big eyes and the study stance she's got. She is always vigilant, receiving these signals, always ready to move away and hide. She is not quite comfortable with herself, but that, again, is a lot of the charm of her, the fact that she really doesn't quite see it, then does, then doesn't. It's like strobe lighting. She goes back and forth with ambivalence about herself."

"She is so strong and intelligent, and on the other hand she lets people manipulate her so easily. I've told her, 'Your face is magic and so erotic that you don't need to show your body. Millons of girls have beautiful bodies, but you have this face, this expressive dark magic.' Oh, she is so stupid. If she didn't have that magic and elegance, she would be finished."

"In so many aspects she is trying to find her identity. To change identities in films is a hard job, anyway, for grown-up people, and even harder for such a young person. She is living like a gypsy now. Sometimes she says to me, 'I have the destiny to live my life fast and get the most beautiful things in life because I will die early.' And when she says it, it cuts into me like knife and I say, 'Stop, don't say that.'"