The day I take either my body or my work for granted will be the day you hear that I've smashed every inch of myself to pieces.
I don't particularly want to smear myself into a hillside.
I do cook a lot for myself. I tend to cook from scratch, a lot of stews and things, lots of beans, because beans have got lots of protein in them but not fat. I am partial to a bit of cheese - I try to limit myself in my cheese intake, but I do enjoy a good smelly cheese. Stinking Bishop is a good one.
People see me high-fivin' and smiling on the court, and they don't think that's me. But it is. I just want to go out and be myself.
I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.
When I was young I used to smother myself with olive oil mixed with a dash of vinegar to keep the flies away and lay in the sunshine for hours on end. But we knew no better then. Now we know how stupid that was.
I myself had to grow a longer beard and Afghan clothes. I was in danger of being kidnapped by smugglers, though I didn't know it at the time.
It may sound funny, but it's true: I tried to put myself through the 12-step program. I didn't want to attend a real meeting; my role didn't really require that, and I feel those meetings are sort of sacred, and they're anonymous for a reason. I tried to deal with some of my love of snacks - and I relapsed a lot.
I have lived so long among people who do not understand me, been so long accustomed to refrain and disguise myself for fear of being laughed at, that I have grown as difficult to come at as a snail in a shell; and what is worse, I cannot come out of my shell when I wish it.
I snap at people I love all the time, and that makes me feel bad about myself. I want to be Zen. I am so not Zen. Whatever Zen is, I'm the opposite of it.
It's not easy. I make snap judgments, too, and I start to write people off. And then I start to remind myself of how I'm constantly asking judges not to write people off. And so then I try to resist it.
There is absolutely a side of me that people don't know. I'm not myself on Snapchat or Instagram. That's totally not me.
In fact I am quite snappy and irritable, and I don't know if I'd like to make myself worse in that respect.
I know that, for me, I need to try to cover myself while breastfeeding so that no one snaps a picture. If this wasn't the case, I probably wouldn't mind as much because my son is my biggest concern. My attitude is, if someone sees a little somethin' somethin', don't look if you don't like it.
I have to pay a huge price to express myself. You get people asking to take photos all the time; you can't ride the subway... I still ride the subway, but there's always people sneaking photos or coming up to you.
As a company, the best that we can do is not only penalize but rehabilitate. Speaking for myself, I've always been strong. I don't need that club to put in my bag. This is a choice of the athlete, not the sanctioning body. We do substance abuse testing, impact testing, cardiac testing, so we try to sniff out these problems before they even start.
I shot a lingerie campaign in Munich once during the winter, and it was actually snowing. At one point, my body literally turned blue, and we had to stop for 20 minutes to get my temperature back to normal. I kept telling myself, 'Try not think about the cold,' but that's extremely hard when you feel like your toes are about to fall off.
The difficulty for me is that I'm interested in so many different things. I could never really imagine myself doing one thing, and I'm pretty sure that I'll end up doing four or five different things.
With the first album, I wanted to do so many different things, and I was fighting with myself to try and see if I was worthy enough to do it.
Right now, I love the fact that I have so many opportunities, but I know this privileged position cannot last. That doesn't mean that I'll stop working. I picture myself as an old actress doing cameos in films with people saying: 'Isn't that that Bening woman?'
