So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.

Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different.

I definitely think about death. And every day your relationship with death changes. And every day I sort of feel like I know it more. I've always thought about it.

I think I've always been afraid of painting, really. Right from the beginning. All my paintings are about painting without a painter. Like a kind of mechanical form of painting. Like finding some imaginary computer painter, or a robot who paints.

It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw.

I realised that you couldn't use the tools of yesterday to communicate today's world. Basically, that was the big light that went on in my head.

In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.