I mean, it is the perfect situation to really love someone to death and to want to rip their clothes off at the same time, isn't it?

I seem to think that anything worth having in life has to be painful to attain.

I think part of it has got to be compensation, yes, for the fact that when I was a kid, I wasn't particularly attractive. But at the same time I don't remember ever thinking, Oh, my God, I'm such a mess; I'm the ugliest sod in the class.

I had my very first relationship at 27 because I really had not actually come to terms with my sexuality until I was 24.

I lost my partner [Anselmo Feleppa] to HIV then it took about three years to grieve; then after that I lost my mother. I felt almost like I was cursed.

I was supposed to be a real Thatcherite. Just by dint of being a first-generation immigrant and having not had money, and then suddenly having it - and getting on planes and going to Ibiza and sitting around in thongs. But actually nothing I was writing or doing was even vaguely Thatcherite.

I don't really feel I deserve something if I haven't had to fight for it. It's not a conscious attitude, and it's stupid and wrong. Sometimes you do deserve things without having to put yourself through agony.