Whenever I've been well-known or hitting the press, I've always had to get my credit card out to prove I'm Damien Hirst.

I can't understand why most people believe in medicine and don't believe in art, without questioning either.

But the answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live.

Sometimes when you're drunk you can see better.

Art is the closest you can get to immortality, though it's a poor substitute - you're working for people not yet born - and people want it because it is brilliant. It ends up in museums anyway; the rich have to give it back to the people, it's their only option. There are no pockets in a shroud.

I love color. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz.

The goal in life is to be solid, whereas the way that life works is totally fluid, so you can never actually achieve that goal.