I've always been battling against my sense of dignity and refinement. I was embarrassed by any bodily functions when I was younger. I could never even blow my nose.

When I was about 25, I went to a hand reader, this Indian guy in a funky neighborhood. He said: The height of your success won't happen until you're in your late 40s.

Ill-informed intuition is fantastic - it's what great art is. So really old painters or writers or actors are brilliant, because they've finally reached the point when they can let go of al technique.

What's great in the modern world is that it's becoming easier and easier for people to create without having access to large sums of money. They need access to certain technologies, but the cost is far less than it used to be.

The whole thing of clothes is insane. You can spend a dollar on a jacket in a thrift store. And you can spend a thousand dollars on a jacket in a shop. And if you saw those two jackets walking down the street, you probably wouldn't know which was which.

I think of myself as being a bit of a wimp deep down - a bourgeois wimp - and I'm fighting that. I think all Brits are, maybe.

I feel the written word, poetry and literature is just one of the most beautiful things that human beings do. So we have to fight for it.