Culture

It's taken for me to get into my 30s to realise I am more than the media told me I was- I have more to say, so do my friends. We are intelligent, we are strong, we are multi-faceted, we are vulgar and we are funny.

Actress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place

I've described celebrities as being 'double agents of the patriarchy,' and whilst things are getting better- and language is changing, we are still not always calling out those who fat shame or age shame women.

Actress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place

Slowly, over the course of a decade, we built relationships by proving we weren't there to destroy luxury's heritage and its 'unspoken codes of conduct,' but actually to protect them and enable this industry to thrive. We were fashion insiders, and we just happened to be coders too!

Founder and CEO of Farfetch, luxury fashion e-commerce platform

We have been interested in celebrities since the dawn of time. Jesus was the first celebrity, then the royal families. Celebrity culture exists even at a micro-level... It's human nature to be interested in the captain of the football team, the head cheerleader or who is doing what with who.

Celebrity gossip blogger and media personality known for celebrity news website

For the most part, there are more average celebrities than superstars. When most people think of celebrities, they think of A-listers, but there's also B-list, C-list, D-list, F-list and even Z-list. The vast majority of people couldn't name who they are, but they're living the dream!

Celebrity gossip blogger and media personality known for celebrity news website

Social media has been a wonderful thing; it allows celebrities to bypass the middle-man. Many celebrities have also been able to monetise their social-media and make extra money, often very serious amounts. Crucially, social media gives celebrities the opportunities to speak for themselves and set the record straight.

Celebrity gossip blogger and media personality known for celebrity news website

The world of celebrity offers an escape from the real world, and offers different things to different people. To many, the celebrity world is aspirational, they imagine themselves living that lifestyle and dream of how it would be to go to that premiere, have that fancy house, or that expensive vacation. For others, the world of celebrity is like watching a car-wreck.

Celebrity gossip blogger and media personality known for celebrity news website

The moment you send Billy Connolly, Lenny Henry and Victoria Wood out somewhere to make an appeal – they are representatives of 'normal people' perhaps in some ways more than pop stars.... Comedians are a kind of humdrum kind of celebrity, and as such I think they're very good at evoking empathy.

British Film Director & Screenwriter of Romantic Comedies

It's always been the job of comedy to point out hypocrisies and problems – it's a long historical tradition that goes all the way back to Aristotle and Jonathan Swift.

British Film Director & Screenwriter of Romantic Comedies

He was playing it and people were dancing. They didn't need to know who the band was, they didn't know what Nile Rodgers… didn't mean anything. They were just going crazy.

Legendary Guitarist & Producer: Chic Founder, Producer for David Bowie, Madonna

In postmodernism, there are no absolute truths; everything is relative, of course other than the one absolute truth that there are no absolute truths. This is a form of intellectual terrorism, nihilism.

Evolutionary Psychologist & Author Known for Consumer Behavior Research

I argue that the ecosystem where idea pathogens originate from is the university; it takes intellectuals to come up with some of the most moronic ideas possible.

Evolutionary Psychologist & Author Known for Consumer Behavior Research

The primacy of overtly scientific approaches to understanding life has come at a tremendous cost; in some ways we see the world in shades of grey rather than in full colour.

Clinical Psychologist, Author of "12 Rules for Life," Public Intellectual

I have way too often felt like 'the other.' Even in my motherland, I did not quite fit in. I never did. This is partly because I was born in France, Strasbourg. After my parents separated, my father stayed in France and remarried.

Turkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love

I am a nomad—intellectually, physically, spiritually. A commuter, in the words of James Baldwin. This state of continuous exile is one that I find difficult to explain to other people but it's who I am.

Turkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love

To me literature was, and still is, an existential need. Books and stories have been that gateway for me. I wanted to find a gate to an 'elsewhere', to another land, a Storyland.

Turkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love