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.

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.

When I used to do abstract paintings at school, like everyone else, the tutor said these would make great curtains. I would always neglect the formal stuff that was going on by using colour, because colour kind of came naturally to me.

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

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.

It's very easy to say, 'I could have done that,' after someone's done it. But I did it. You didn't. It didn't exist until I did it.

I'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.