I have been interested in fashion since I was a kid. Then I lived in London, where it was more about costume and a personal statement of who you are than about fashion.
There are so many great galleries and museums in London, but they can be very crowded during the day.
My father was a socialist, so he would have thought that I shouldn't be a dame.
Contrary to popular view, I've never been patronized in the Middle East. Men maybe treat women differently, but they do not treat them with disrespect. They don't hate women. It's a very different kind of mentality.
All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.
Like men, women have to be diligent and work hard.
People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner.
Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?
I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing.
I think about architecture all the time. That's the problem. But I've always been like that. I dream it sometimes.
I don't think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. It should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think.
If you think about making a city that is much more porous, many accessible spaces, that is a political position, because you don't fortify, you open it up so that many people can use it.
I don't particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums.
Good education is so important. We do need to look at the way people are taught. It not just about qualifications to get a job. It's about being educated.
When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building.
Wherever I am in the world, my perfect day begins with waking up and heading to the beach or the pool or somewhere I can be semi-comatose. I just wake up and go to the sun.
It's very important that historic cities are allowed to reinvent their future.
The funkiest housing in Holland is for low-income, and I think that's very nice.
Education, housing and hospitals are the most important things for society.
My father was a politician, and a very important politician, and one of the leaders of the Iraqi Democratic Party, who believed in progress.