When I was a teenager, I had trouble getting a boyfriend, so I imagined Arthur Rimbaud or Bob Dylan as my boyfriend.

I always thought my father [influenced me most] because he was so well read, I tried to model myself on him, but really as I go through life I realise it was my mother who gave me the most valuable instructions. I didn't understand or accept it at the time. She taught me to read and to pray - two things that have really stayed with me.

We have to believe, as creators - just like a doctor doing heart surgery has to believe that he can save that person's life. You have to believe that your pursuit is not just a noble pursuit, but a necessary and inborn pursuit to uncover something.

We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.

I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.

I'm not a critic. I'm not a journalist. I'm not a philosopher. Arguing that punk has run its course is like saying painting ran its course after the Renaissance. Punk is an idea. It's freedom. And it'll be around 200 years from now for the people who want it.

I'm old-fashioned. I think William Blake and people in the Renaissance people were multi. Look at da Vinci, he was involved in science; and Michelangelo was dabbling in poetry. Both of them were painters and sculptors but they also involved themselves with architecture. I honestly don't know what happened in the '60s and '70s. If you sang rock and roll in America at that time or were involved in expressing yourself through music like that, then many thought you couldn't possibly be an artist. That thinking is archaic.