When I saw that Laverne Cox was on the cover of 'Time' magazine, I totally lost it. It was a coup for the girls!

I want to start the trans mafia one day.

I admire actresses who are willing to jettison the easy route toward exposure and commercial success as an actor in favor or a slow burn, choosing projects carefully, and building an artistic practice over time that feels specific to who they are as artists.

Sexuality is who you want to be with. Gender identity is who you want to be in the world.

I liked playing video games because I felt like I was inside of the story in a way that I didn't feel when I was just watching something. Any chance I could get to step into the shoes of another person, I would take. I couldn't get enough of stories.

Fashion gave me my start, and that will always be my home. I'll always be so grateful for all my collaborators and friends I've made there, but I'm so excited to dive head first into just being a working actor.

If we didn't desensitize ourselves in some way, every day would feel like its own tragedy.

I don't want to say that women who do use makeup or get breast implants or have fake nails are insecure. They're entitled to that, and they should do that if that's what they want to do. But for me, there are no answers. It's just a matter of preference and choice and fetish.

I see a Reiki healer from time to time. She sits on my bed, and I lie in her lap. She puts her hands on me for about 45 minutes, and she reads my energy. Whenever I'm having a hard time, I call her. I also go to weekly therapy, and that has been invaluable. Also, getting on medication for my 'neural atypicalities,' I guess we might call them.

I live in a little studio apartment, so I try to keep the space super clean at all times.

When you're a teenager, everything is amplified because everything is a first. The first time you feel othered, the first time you feel rejected, the first time you fall in love... it's the first time, so it's so vivid, and everything feels like the whole world almost, because it is your whole world; your world is small when you're a teenager.

I keep a very cold apartment - I tend to crank my AC just about as low as it can go. I sleep with a big, warm comforter, even during the summer, and just burrow underneath it.

I've gone from the edgy girl to the girl you call for H&M and L'Oreal, which is something neither I nor the myriad agencies that rejected me when I tried to get signed could have predicted.

I got the Fire Stick as a gift at the Amazon Emmys after-party in 2015, and because I haven't lived in a house with cable television since I lived with my parents as a child, I've just streamed everything. I can afford cable. I have a television. But I only stream things.

Leaving the house in a pair of flip-flops in Manhattan is disgusting to me, no shade.

I used to think I was a gay man with this idea of a muse in my head, like a woman that I thought was inspirational or aspirational. But the woman was actually me.

I like shows for atmosphere. I don't know, I think a plot-driven show is so boring and masc4masc and gross.

I'm grateful to be in school developing my practice as an actor. In that process, it's difficult to say that you've definitively 'learned' something.

I think people get stuck in a cycle with social media sometimes and don't know how to make adjustments that are personal.

I had family who exposed me to all sorts of different media involving actors - films, theatrical productions touring through Boston. My grandparents, particularly my mother's parents, were huge fans of all the arts, and they took me to these shows and exhibits at a very young age, so I was just immersed in it.

My desire to be an actor or a model precedes my identity.

I think that often my work is obscured by my gender identity.

I could have hidden in Boston and lived at home for three years, gone through my transition, taken voice lessons to make my voice more feminine, gotten gender reassignment surgery, and spent time to complete my transition, but I didn't want to wait. I wanted to be in the world.

People make fun of me because I've been known to eat lunch things for breakfast. I'll eat a good salad. I'll maybe have some tempeh or kale in there. I try to make breakfast a lavish meal because, one, my body tells me to, and, two, that's what carries me through the day.

Brands like RMS Beauty and Kat Burki are my skincare heroes.

When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I 'do things in front of people.' I don't know why I do what I do. I've tried working behind the scenes. I felt left out!

Visibility is not, in itself, always a good thing, but when it is in the hands of those who need positive visibility, it can be.

I always think I look dead, but I never actually do.

Fashion gave me the platform that has made this transition from fashion to Hollywood, from East Coast to West Coast. Fashion gave me the platform that has made this easier than it is for a lot of other people. And I will always count fashion as the industry that was first to welcome me and embrace what I could do.

What we really need to look at is gender fluidity and the idea that gender can be customised however you want.

I don't feel comfortable with the idea that my only gateway into doing what I love to do is auditioning for other people to give me the green light and say that I'm allowed to do it, or that I'm allowed to play this role, or that I'm allowed to be in this movie. I would feel much more comfortable making those opportunities for myself.

I feel like so much of mainstream feminism springs from the second wave, which was essentially a discourse spearheaded by white, cisgender, upper middle class women. I feel - especially as I'm trying to negotiate this new female space with the feminism that's available to me - there are a lot of places where I'm disenfranchised.

I was never good at being a boy, but I was always a good student.

I want to play Lady Macbeth. I have a big chip on my shoulder about Lady Macbeth. People usually play her as this cold, Greek witch, but there's no evidence of that in the text! I think her intentions are pure.

It's time for the aesthetics of upwardly mobile feminist respectability to make room for the aesthetics of survival, particularly trans survival.

If you're going to make a film about rage in 2018, 2017... If you're going to make a film about revenge and anger, I feel like that has to be a film about women. I don't really want to watch a film about angry men. I've seen way too many of those.

If anyone says that American socialism isn't possible, point them toward the bowling shoe.

I feel like the most fascinating parts of a trans life take place after the decision to transition. They take place when you're in this new body, in this new life, and you start realizing things.

I want to see definitions of what's beautiful, compelling, palatable, marketable, sexy, and prestigious open up to a wider range of bodies, identities, and backgrounds.

When I don't wear makeup, it's not because I'm lazy, but it's me making this radical bid for the feminization of my body and being confident in that.

Being a woman means that my male privilege seeped out of my body.

To see a trans body in this ideal space - on a cover, in an ad - these are spaces that have immense cultural power to dictate what is beautiful, what is glamorous, what is aspirational, what is sexy, what is clean. That can be very powerful and helpful in the de-stigmatization of trans bodies.

Being a woman is an option, being trans is an option, and they're options that appeal to me. We need to listen to people - not labels, not semantics.

I was really into emo and scene culture in middle school.

I would like to produce, and eventually, I would like to direct.

If I ever called myself an activist, I regret it, and I was cornered into it by an industry who couldn't justify me taking up space without saying that I had some kind of radical political agenda because they saw my participation as a radical political thing. Which it was not.

I like to let my skin breathe, I don't like to stress it out. I don't like to put it through very much.

I'm fun, ruthless, articulate, impatient, maybe a little cavalier. I'm a woman and a feminist. I'm transgender. I'm an actress, a reluctant writer, occasionally a potato-shaped model.

I was romantically socialized as a gay man, and now that I am, for most intents and purposes, a heterosexual woman, I have to learn how to talk to straight men, which is the scariest thing I've ever done.

I don't want the same trans story to be told over and over again. I don't want people to get stuck on this very western idea of what it means to be transgender.