You can find inspiration in everything. If you can't, then you're not looking properly.

I got the letter about becoming a Sir in 2000, the same year that Pauline asked me if we could finally get married. My assistant, Colette, called up and it turned out both the wedding and the Buck House ceremony were happening on the same day. I was knighted at 11 and married at four. She became an instant Lady.

I was there [in school] the full time with one teacher, and the student body was never more than 10 or 12 students of all ages.

When knowledge is scant or conflicting, folklore takes over.

Even today, the bigger the city, the better. That's why I live in New York.

The environment itself was culturally a vacuum, in that there was simply nothing that would inspire me in the arts. But my parents were always very supportive of anything that I explored or wanted to do.

He [my father] didn't have a basement workshop as such, but I know that he did build things, construct things, repair things. My mother, likewise, was sewing and doing activities that often take place in a household.