Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.

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.

In fact, the first piece of art I ever sold, I paid someone else to make the next one, so I could actually keep going out drinking.

I like the confusion you get between science and religion … that’s where belief lies and art as well.

Death's just something that inspires me, not something that pulls me down. I used to get called morbid at school. I have always loved horror films; I like being frightened.

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

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.