Across the communication landscape move the specters of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy.

We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel.

I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

All through my career I've written 1,000 words a day - even if I've got a hangover. You've got to discipline yourself if you're professional. There's no other way.

Nudity in photography, whether involving adults or children, is a subject sinking under a freight of political and moral disapproval it could never hope to support, and this is not the place for me to get out the bilge pump. I will only say that critics who tremble so fiercely at the thought of the voyeuristic male gaze miss the point that distance generates mystery and enchantment, and expresses the awe with which the male imagination regards all women.

I wanted to rub the human race in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror.

The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change.