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I think art comes from some sense of discomfort with the world, some sense of not quite fitting with it.

What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life.

What the art world has done, it has been constantly been pushing the boundaries about what art can be. It's like expanding its territory.

A lot of people are intimated by art, but it's something to be revered beyond criticism.

Art has to be reflective of our society.

We are concerned with the relationship between art and life. Contemporary art is only intelligible in terms of its relationship to our life.

I've never understood why artists, who so often condescend to the cliches of their own culture, are so eager to embrace the cliches of cultures they know nothing about.

One often forgets that even if art is a very successful field in contemporary culture, there are still a lot of people alienated by it. Even if people don't fully understand where my work is coming from, at least there's somebody who looks kind of sane standing in front of you and politely engaging with you. People react.

I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

There is a small world of people who are very interested in contemporary art and a slightly bigger world of people who look at contemporary art. But then there is a much larger world that doesn't realise how influential art is on things that they actually look at.