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I've been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copied everything in drawing, trying to understand.

Then finally I said, 'Okay, well, I want to know all the details. I want creative input. I want to be consulted. I want to know what they're doing and who's involved. And I want to see the space.' So they took me to see it, and then I realized it was major! All these red flags on the Rue de Rivoli with my name on them right by the Louvre!

I remember being a student, and I would go every Friday to the Louvre and stay for ages, just walking around.

Keep good company - that is, go to the Louvre.

You don't want to pitch a tent and live inside the Louvre. You want to check it out, appreciate it, and move somewhere else.

For me, those little cinemas in Paris where I saw many art films for the first time meant that cinema became a kind of pilgrimage site.

There is no reason why the Louvre should be your favourite gallery just because it has the grandest collections in France, any more than Kew should necessarily be a favourite garden because it has the largest assemblage of plants, or Tesco your chosen shop because it has the widest variety of canned beans.

It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.