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In my own life, I find myself doing some task - driving or playing golf - and having a conversation with my mother or father, who are both deceased. I don't know if that means I'm mentally ill, but I suspect lots of people do it. And when I hold that conversation, different images of my parents appear to me.

There's a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I'm affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn't want to leave. He likes it very much.

As a child in the early 1980s, I tended to talk with things in my mouth - food, dentist's tubes, balloons that would fly away, whatever - and if no one else was around, I'd talk anyway.

I have never had other kids in the house... I had a huge collection of marbles, and they all had names, which I think concerned my parents. I used to go and sweep outside and talk to myself, and my mum's friends would be over and say, 'Do you realise she is talking to herself?'

It's getting harder and harder to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone. It still brings me up short to walk by somebody who appears to be talking to themselves.

My mother sent me to psychiatrists since the age of four because she didn't think little boys should be sad. When my brother was born, I stared out the window for days. Can you imagine that?

It was deeply interesting to observe my mother closely and to draw her. During those last months, she wasn't speaking much, if at all, and it was a way for me to be with her. It felt very natural.

My wife and I have a schizophrenic son. We didn't want to accept this for 30 years, so we put him under great pressure when we shouldn't have. He just wanted to be looked after, and we didn't respect that. We tried to make him independent.

I was one of those weird children that just couldn't talk to people, so I kind of had to make myself be not like that because I knew it was going to hinder me.

I grew up as an only child. My parents weren't great conversationalists. We had a quiet house. I'm not very verbal.