A Quote by Dasha Zhukova

The thing is, I grew up in L.A., so I had this unique opportunity to live in both communist Russia and see that life, and then move to America as a young girl and experience a completely different life.
Life experience. I can talk it up, vow to broaden my horizons, but I’m still limited to the experiences with my life. How can a person understand an experience that lies completely outside her own? She can see it, feel it, imagine what it would be like to live it, but it’s no different from seeing a movie on a screen and saying, “Thank God that’s not me”.
I've had a lot of different lives. I was adopted, I grew up in Nebraska, and then I went to Northwestern... Then I had this really extraordinary, different life than my parents.
When we kind of get caught up in the minutiae, the details that make us all different, I think there's two ways of seeing that. There's an opportunity to see the texture of that person, the characteristics that make them unique. And then there's an opportunity to go to war about it and to say that that person is different from me and I don't like you, so let's battle.
What acting does bring that music doesn't bring for me is the opportunity is the opportunity to be completely different in every way from whom you normally are, the person that you are when you wake up in the morning is who you are in your life. But to take that and have the opportunity to be the complete opposite of that, is the excitement of it.
I was planning to transition right after high school and attend university as a girl, but then the modeling thing came up. It was an opportunity to see the world. My family knew I identified as a girl, but I didn't tell people in fashion.
I think people assume that because I talk the way that I talk that I grew up with money, and then I've had to say, 'No, I grew up poor.' And then I was like, 'Why do I have to play this game where the only black experience that's authentic is the one where you grew up in poverty?' I mean, it's ridiculous.
I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black drag queen in it, Belize, with a big heart. I finally had a character to relate to.
You see, where I'm from, fighting is simply not a 'girl's thing.' In Umuarama, I grew up playing football, which to my family was also not a girl's thing, to be honest. Playing football was my biggest passion. I wanted to be on TV, to be just like Marta. I even had a knack for it.
When I was younger I thought success was something different. I thought, " When I grow up, I want to be famous. I want to be a star. I want to be in movies. When I grow up I want to see the world, drive nice cars. I want to have groupies." But my idea of success is different today. For me, the most important thing in your life is to live your life with integrity and not to give into peer pressure, to try to be something that you're not. To live your life as an honest and compassionate person. To contribute in some way.
I grew up in communist Russia where we didn't have anything, so I'm not worried that I can't buy an extra pair of shoes.
'Saw' has been a unique experience in that I've had the opportunity to work with some really great artists, and everyone has contributed in so many different ways, in all of the different departments of a film crew.
Your trip in this life is very provisional, but the best thing you can do in your life to live in the right way is to take every day as a great opportunity to do what you can and when you're as lucky as I have been in life in getting so much attention and exposure, you learn that you can move mountains with a very small effort.
...I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven't forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn't have the opportunity to pursue her dreams, and all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn't do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom's dreams?
Saw has been a unique experience in that Ive had the opportunity to work with some really great artists, and everyone has contributed in so many different ways, in all of the different departments of a film crew.
Life can be a lot broader... when you realize one simple thing: And that is that everything around us that we call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you. And you can build your own life that other people can live in. So build a life. Don't live one. Build one. Find your opportunity, and always be sexy.
My family reached the United States before the Holocaust. Both of my parents emigrated from Russia as young children. My grandparents were fleeing religious persecution and came to America seeking a better life for their family.
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