Editing yourself is like an irksome coin toss. You've got to strip yourself of super ego and operate from the id. Maybe I've got my Freud mixed up. It's just hard to trade a beauty shot for the performance with truth and a brightly lit zit.

Each experience through which we pass operates ultimately for our good. This is a correct attitude to adopt and we must be able to see it in that light.

The theatre only knows what it's doing next week not like the opera where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude.

No one's going to be able to operate without a grounding in the basic sciences. Language would be helpful although English is becoming increasingly international. And travel. You have to have a global attitude.

It's a fundamental social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that it sounds like 'Well yeah ' but you start to think 'Why not though?' What makes one more valuable than another?

There was a big drive when I was at art school to make you aware of the economy of meaning - after all this was still during the tail end of minimalism. Being responsible for everything you put in your picture and being able to defend it. Keeping everything clear around you so you know what is operating. To open the wound and keep it clean.

Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera theater music and dance are thriving all over the world but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.

I'm enamored with the art world. Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic there's a commercial world around it: the ballet opera any kind of music. It can't exist without it.

The art of Peace I practice has room for each of the world's eight million gods and I cooperate with them all. The God of Peace is very great and enjoins all that is divine and enlightened in every land.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.