"Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms."

"I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don't last for ever makes them beautiful."

"Since I was a child, death is definitely something that I think about every day. But I think that everybody does. You try and avoid it, but it's such a big thing that you can't."

"I've been asked to do a retrospective since I was about 28 and I always thought that was a bit odd. It's great to look forward as an artist because in the future the possibilities are infinite you look back and it's all fixed so it's a scary thing."

"By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made."

"Performance has to be mainstream art. This is what I'm fighting for."

"Anyone who relishes art should love the extraordinary diversity and psychic magic of our art galleries. There's likely more combined square footage for the showing of art on one New York block - West 24th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues - than in all of Amsterdam's or Hamburg's galleries."

"It is a humble truth that art is the soul's attempt to give enduring form to the formless."