"No one would ever believe that I was shy. Up on the runway I don't feel that way. I don't feel like they're looking at me. When I'm doing my job, nothing can touch me. I feel protected. It's backstage I feel vulnerable. My anxiety kicks in in social situations."
"I have this great fear of people - not when I'm on the runway, but backstage. In a room full of people, I really suffer. I sort of go into a tunnel and I feel very removed. I get so tense, I can't swallow, and my heartbeat goes way up. It still happens now, although I'm better at controlling it."
"It was traditional (Italian), even old-fashioned. When I was a teenager, I had to choose whether to go out on a Friday or Saturday night. Never both. And we always had proper meals."
"How it's cut, who cut it, how it moves, the lining...I even like it when it's what I consider to be ugly."
"I was having panic attacks. I didn't want to live that way anymore. I was in love and I wanted it to work. I was tired of travelling, tired of the whole scene, just tired. I sat around. I was lazy. I wanted a routine, and I wanted to wake up in the same bed every day, and I got my wish."
"The miscarriage was a big part of my absence. That contributed to my further laziness and depression. It was the hardest thing I ever had to go through. And I'm not over it, and I never will be. Everyone says, 'After you fall off a horse, get back up on it again,' but I didn't get back up on the horse. I didn't have the courage. I just think the further along in the term, the harder it is. You can't measure that kind of pain. I accept it, and I understand it; it's just hard. But life goes on. At least I'm optimistic."
"I got so sick of my face and the flaws."
Summer in Tokyo at 16 years old: "When I got there, I freaked out. It wasn't what they'd said it would be. They wanted nude and funny stuff. They asked me to strip to take my measurements, even though they had them already" Put up for the night in an apartment, she escaped and walked the streets, looking for a phone booth. When she told her parents that a man had helped her and she was phoning from his apartment, they went crazy. She returned home after a day and half. Even so, her mother let her have another try. When she finished school, Evangelista went to New York, on the condition that she would come home every weekend.
"One of my first jobs was in Italy and that's where I saw cocaine for the first time. There was a murder in our group that weekend. I decided then and there that I would never do drugs. I have anxiety attacks, so there's no way I could do them.