Religion has been an important part of my understanding, my inquiry into what it means to be human.

The secret of a happy life is respect. Respect for yourself and respect for others.

I don't feel that as an artist my job is to offer PR propaganda, whether for the good or for the bad.

I don't know what it's like to be Jewish, but I suspect there is some aspect of that: being Jewish is the thing that bonds you as opposed to being Jewish from Poland, or Jewish from Hungary.

Sooner or later we've all got to confront the reality that we have got to come to understand who we are and what we're doing, and the extent to which we are guided or manipulated by forces that are beyond our control.

I started to understand that for me, art was no longer about self-expression but about creative engagement with the world. I started to respond in an excited way to making work inside an industry and not feeling the constraints of audience expectation as some kind of thing that I should avoid.

In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.