When I put my big retrospective together in '96 [for the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York], I saw that there were all these pictures of people inside looking out. All these pictures of women in water and mirrors. I don't know what it means.

I'm not ashamed of my body and you know everything in the fashion world, if I was vulnerable to it, could drive me crazy. I think it produces so much self-hatred.

The things that I look at include Renaissance art. I'm obsessed with churches and paintings of saints.

Of course I was wearing make-up, I never went anywhere without red lipstick for 25 years! It was a form of self-preservation for me to continue to wear lipstick even though my face was broken.

I feel like if I started to use it [camera] that way, it would be like a sin almost. I never show people ugly pictures I take of them. I usually destroy them. So even if I like it, and they don't, it doesn't get shown.

In America, more than half the population are overweight. It's not healthy and I'm not proud of that but I don't hate having a woman's body.

I never courted that but it's nice when it's people you respect and they respect your work. It's thrilling.