When journalists come to interview me, it's a part of my life that is exhibited, as if pieces of clothing are being taken off one by one. But it's not very important really.

I've already bought another house in Tangier and the one in Deauville has been for sale for some time. As for Yves's Saint Laurent apartment, it is being sold because he's dead. But I won't be furnishing my home from Ikea.

I'm not an ascetic and please don't use the word zen, which is so lightly bandied about these days. Being zen . . . It's shameful to talk in such a way. I haven't become an ascetic but I'm not going to build up another collection. I'm going to create my new environment. I already know what I want.

Let's talk about that for a moment, about the couple that Yves Saint Laurent and I were. Like all couples we went through "storms," as the Jacques Brel song says. But if there's one area where we never had the slightest disagreement, it was art. Never. Not once. Not about painting, not about opera, not about theater. We were always in complete communion. Of course, that's how all of the collection came into being.

I am a man who has spent more than half a century ostensibly and visibly accompanying Yves Saint Laurent throughout his life - but not only that. In the past and still today, I have been behind a lot of creators and artists, supporting them and helping them. That's probably how I see my mission.

I hate sentiment when it's inappropriate. I saw someone who went and saw an exhibition and came out in tears. If an exhibition drives you to tears you need to see a psychiatrist immediately. That's what I think.

Love is what makes me live, quite simply. It's the only thing that makes me work. It made me become what I am today.