Top 153 Quotes & Sayings by Somali Authors

Beauty is being comfortable and confident in your own skin.

The people of Somalia just do not have a voice. They are to me the most forgotten people in the world.

Every day, women move mountains. It is an insult to have an international women's day.

I would DJ pool parties in Minneapolis, but I never swam there!

The long-term solution in preventing another famine in Somalia is to promote self-reliance.

I am so far more secure and more grounded and more know who I am than when I was in my 20s.

To reach your goal authentically is probably, in the end, going to mean much more to you than having reached it in a false way.

You want to reach people, but you also want to reach them in the most authentic way. You now have a mass market and an audience that's listening, but they're in love with a song that means absolutely nothing to you.

You want a career? Do that first. You don't want to have kids? Then don't. You don't want to get married? Then don't. But once you do something, you've got to know that there is compromise.

People get numbed when they see picture after picture, year in and year out, of people starving.

Intelligence is sexy. Don't play dumb, especially young girls. Don't play dumb. And let people see that you are intelligent.

I can enjoy anywhere, and I can leave it. Life is about moving on.

I used to play football all the time. In the U.S., people don't play football, so I had to learn basketball. Looking back, that's what I like about my life - doing new things, having a new perspective.

I wasn't a major in political science for nothing, so I understood the politics of beauty and the politics of race when it comes to the fashion industry.

My mother was an activist; so was my father. They came from a generation of young Somalis who were actively involved in getting independence for Somalia in 1960.

When my daughter Zulekha was born, I was at the pinnacle of my working life as a model, and I pulled myself in two trying to cope with being both a mother and a career girl.

I know that often times a lot of people who work in music, whether they be labels and so on or even artists, want personal recognition. We want to be recognized for something, for what we did. I'd rather my song be recognized for what it's doing and that's important. It's not so important how many people know me.

Art isn't held with the same high regard as it is after success. In any country, in any language, you're a loser if you're making music until you prove otherwise.

I tell all my younger friends, 'Don't be afraid of change. That is when you truly see what your destiny is.'

On my 50th birthday in 2005, my discount-wielding AARP card came in the mail. I hurled it in the trash, put on something fabulous, and had a decadent meal. Just the thought of putting it in my wallet felt like a concession.

It is weird. A lot of people try to ask me political questions. I'm not a politician.

It was interesting to find how dominating American vision is all over the world. I think there's something to be said about the world's mindset and its economics and all of that, and I think it affects the way we see ourselves and it affects music.

I wanted a bronzer so I could look like I just came from Ibiza everyday.

I speak five languages besides mine. I went to school in Egypt because girls weren't allowed to go to school in Saudi Arabia. It's very restricting, especially for girls; we're not allowed to go anywhere.

I suffer from low self-esteem. I had horrible self-esteem growing up. You really have to save yourself because the critic within you will eat you up. It's not the outside world - it's your interior life, that critic within you, that you have to silence.

I was never a practicing Muslim. But I do consider myself a Muslim.

Multicultural markets are nuanced but not alien.

I believe the universe has great plans for us. When you are young, you don't learn that.

There are some people who have helped to advance me and other girls, but the fashion industry is always behind popular culture. They think they understand the zeitgeist. They don't know anything about the zeitgeist.

The only way I see the world now is through coming out of and growing up and living in Somalia. In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras.

Nobody has ever said to me that I was pretty, 'til I met Peter Beard.

My ritual is cooking. I find it therapeutic. It comes naturally to me. I can read a recipe and won't have to look at it again.

Italian was my first foreign language. I speak it better than English.

There are highlights when you become irreplaceable as a model, like when you become a muse to designers. They look at you differently; you're not a coat hanger for hire.

Personal style? I don't really believe in that. Whatever is comfortable.

Hip-hop in Africa has been very often a duplication of an American experience, but in a context that's totally alien to it.

When I was leaving Yemen to come to America, things were tough. My dad had just been laid off, and it was a challenge. When I lived in Yemen, I thought America was a perfect place. Everything was bigger and better. I dreamed big. The American dream, you know? You have to work hard for your dream to come true.

The difference between rearing a child in your 20s and one in your 50s is one of patience.

I would rather Google other people than Google myself.

I'm a very political person, and I think things through clearly, even when I was 18 years old.

I have big hope for the Canadian government to help Somalia with something concrete and tangible. I haven't seen that.

I believe in glamour. I am in favor of a little vanity. I don't rely on just my genes.

I was admittedly comfortable with Iman Cosmetics being identified as a beauty brand that filled the gap for black women because it was deeply personal for me.

I think it's a mistake to work on success in career. I've worked on my passions obsessively. How can I say what I want to say more precisely than the last time I said it? Success is such an elusive concept. When you work for it, I think you get it in a way you might regret it.

It was not my dream to be an artist. How could it have been? I thought, artist, much like a leader, was something you either were or weren't. Never something you set out to be.

I have moments of darkness, of anger, and moments of rage. They do creep up at the most inopportune times. Not to recognize that in my music would give people a sense of sainthood that I don't necessarily have or even want to have.

I don't look like a white woman. I look Somali.

At the end of the day, a 34B doesn't give you self-esteem.

That is something that my mother instilled in me at a very young age - to know my self-worth. And I have had times again and again in the fashion industry where all of that was tested and I rose to the occasion because I was told that I am worthy and I should be able to walk away from something that is not worthy of me.

I faced quite a few challenging times, and in front of those, I was more positive than some people not facing those conditions. I'm actually of the belief now that it is that struggle that offers you that open-hearted hope.

There is a lot of noise out there. I don't want to follow the trend - I want to create the trend.

I am the face of a refugee. I was once a refugee. I was with my family in exile.

Eliminating the things you love is not wellness. Wellness feeds your soul and makes you feel good.

I love the truth. Tell the truth and live the truth, because we've seen enough lies and look what it's doing.

The problem is that rap is so often a caricature of its own image. Nobody comes to the table with the seriousness of the effect that it can have; nobody is prepared for that.

I belong nowhere and to no one.

My question about my art and my music has always been, 'Am I good, or am I good because?' I'm not the artist who wants to have the 'because' attached.

I still do find it very difficult in the West to connect to this politeness of smiling, not saying how you're thinking or not saying how you really feel.

When I decided to become a doctor, I was very, very young, when my mother, her seventh child, became pregnant, and she was feeling terrible pain, and I could not know how to help her. And my mother died in front of my eyes, without knowing why, which diagnosis. So I decided to be a doctor.

We never wore burkas because Somalis had our own culture.