I see a wiser person than when I was younger: having babies, and passing 30, were the turning points. What women in their 40s - I am 39 - lack in gorgeousness, they make up for in wisdom. I love ageing, despite the drawbacks - thinner, drier skin.

~I've learned the value of absorbing the moment. I remember the first time Ripley saw her shadow. My God, it was like shadows had just been invented. It was the most exquisite moment.~

Humans are really interesting. We're so clever, what we do with our brain. How we manage to con ourselves into thinking all sorts of things is really fascinating. By the same token, if we could just convince ourselves of things that would gather us together and powerfully turn things around for the good, that would be awesome. It's doubtful because we're such a fear-based species.

I've been fortunate not to have been pigeonholed by virtue of being mixed-race, of being English and black, and by virtue of working all over the world. I've enjoyed a great degree of variety in the work that I've done. It's been quite unique.

When I am out and about I feel watched. It's become second nature. The only time I get to be private is in my work. That is when I liberate the ego. The blessed-out sensation of liberating the ego.

Very often, if you think about what's erotic and break it down, as we're feeling the excitement of eroticism, we're feeling fear. We want to try to dominate our fear and get rid of our fear, so we go towards it and have sex with it, basically. That's really sad.

[We assume] that the self is an actual living thing, but it's not. It's a projection which our clever brains create in order to cheat ourselves from the reality of death.