I am personally happy for artists to make as much money as they can while they can to carry them through the times when they can't.

When I was a very young student I loved and admired the work of Sam Beckett, who is famously pessimistic, and whose writing is an extraordinary examination of emptiness. I wanted to be like Beckett. I don't have the same attitude toward the world, I'm naturally optimistic, and so of course I could never be like Beckett. You can't force yourself to become like someone you admire.

I do think I paid a price as an artist, and I am trying to make up for it now - I work six days a week in the studio, and I've never been happier.

I wanted to make new works of very contemporary objects, which I thought was interesting because many of them are manufactured in China, but these objects are universal, they go across all languages, all cultures.

I came to painting through sculpture, to images through objects. I think that images sit in the middle, somewhere between objects and words.

If you were really interested in being creative in teaching, it was possible to try new methods and that was really what we did in Goldsmiths - we used the freedom of the time.

If you try to copy something exactly you won't get it correct, because you don't share the same tradition and context.