My desire is to preserve the sense of people’s lives, to endow them with the strength and beauty I see in them. I want the people in my pictures to stare back.

I have no ambivalence about myself wearing make-up or designer clothes but I have an enormous ambivalence about what the fashion world has done to women.

The only time I went out was to go to bars at night and all the pictures were taken with a flash because there was no light at all. However now I'm very interested in light.

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 like Stella [McCartney] a lot - she's a very open and warm person. I don't particularly want to know about her background.

The thing that drives me most crazy in the world is not to be believed.

As a non-Catholic, and since I was a child, I have been obsessed with the ritual and the beauty of Catholic art. I look at Renaissance art all the time.