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You can spend your money on art works and sit down and look at them. Or you can use your money to help people.

I don't need the money, dear. I work for art.

I have written favourably in support of subsidy for the arts since the 1960s, and I continue to believe absolutely in subsidy, as I do in the BBC licence fee.

We're under the Arts Council under the Minister for the Arts. The Minister for the Arts and the Minister for Industrial Development have great difficulty in agreeing over who should fund what in terms of film.

As an artist, you need to be not at all entitled in your relation with the work. So money is kind of worrying. You can start to expect things if you're used to a certain level of comfort.

If you're creating something that has some sort of cultural currency - if the idea is getting out there - then that will probably yield money in some form, whether it's through selling art or selling books or being asked to give a lecture.

I used to have a list of things from my school buddies of what kind of art material they wanted. I'd go up to the West End of London and spend the whole day knocking stuff off.

If you're an artist, it's OK to put your money into your art. The advantage, in hindsight, is that you become the film, and the film becomes you; you breathe it.

Art and money are closely related. Try sitting down with a group of artists and ask them what's on their mind. Very quickly the topic shifts to money. And it can be very hard to get them off that subject.

The success of the arts has come through a mix of public subsidy, substantial private support, and good box-office receipts, but central to Labour's post-1997 programme has been a determination to increase access as much as excellence.