When it comes to emotions, we all feel pain in the same way, everyone, whether you're from Istanbul or Beijing.

From about the age of 5, I was aware that I didn't fit. I was the black, atheist kid in the all-white, Catholic school run by nuns. I was an anomaly.

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.

Then I became a mother and it just fills every space, that isn't filled with something else important. It's just like this incredible balloon that blows up and fills life up.

[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.

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.

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.