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.

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

You've got to be oblivious to other people, the push and pull of other people's opinions, the way other people measure success. It's then that you realize you are 100 percent who you are and you have to use that who-you-are 100 percent in order to create great things.

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.

Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don't think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.