Kevyn Aucoin

“My entire mission in life is to help women take over the world. Not by force (the route so many men have taken since the beginning of time), but with compassion, perseverance, and love.”

“I'd rather have huge success and huge failures than travel in the middle of the road.”

“When I was growing up, the men in my life were abusive; women were the ones I ran to for comfort.”

“Life is too short to spend hoping that the perfectly arched eyebrow or hottest new lip shade will mask an ugly heart.”

“Yes, but everyone is beautiful to someone.”

“I think the responsibility lies with the fashion world as a collective. We have to demand more variety.”

“I'm not saying that putting on makeup will change the world or even your life, but it can be a first step in learning things about yourself you may never have discovered otherwise. At worst, you could make a big mess and have a good laugh.”

“Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it.”

“I'm very passionate about what I do.”

“Fights with my father were really quite brutal. I would not live his vision. I would not become who he wanted me to be. Everything I did was criticized. I would spend three months drawing something and show him, and he would look up from his paper and just look back down. I got no approval from him for anything I did that was creative.”

“I don't use 'always do this,' 'never say that' and I never give advice because I'm not the end-all, be-all authority.”

“Another thing that's pathetic is this rule that you have to look ugly to get respect as an actress. Jessica Lange had to make herself look really bad to prove that she had amazing talent.”

“Today I see beauty everywhere I go, in every face I see, in every single soul.”

“I was a regular little boy who also enjoyed things that girls did.”

“Audrey had an angelic quality about her. She didn't act like she was better than everyone, she just had a presence, an energy, a sort of light coming from within her that was overwhelming.”

“The faces I see in the modeling industry can get dull.”

“I'm going to insult a whole industry here, but it seems like TV is for people who can't do film. I'm not talking about actresses; I'm talking about lighting people. Lighting on TV is just so... it's sinful, it really is.”

“Beauty is about perception, not about make-up. I think the beginning of all beauty is knowing and liking oneself. You can't put on make-up, or dress yourself, or do you hair with any sort of fun or joy if you're doing it from a position of correction.”

“I was absolutely lost in love and life when I did my drawings. Time stood still.”

“Trying to conceal the fact that I was a gay, effeminate, hyperactive, adopted child with a serious lisp in southern Louisiana would have been like trying to hide Dolly Parton in a string bikini!”