“I have frequently said, and I will repeat again, in the manner of any well-meaning seriality, that I’m interested in mixing the ingratiation of wishful thinking with the criticality of knowing better.”

Images are made palpable, ironed flat by technology and, in turn, dictate the seemingly real through the representative.

The place of the arts in the classroom is essential in encouraging invention, ambition, and an understanding of the importance and pleasures of living an examined life.

I want to speak, show, see, and hear outrageously astute questions and comments. I want to be on the sides of pleasure and laughter and to disrupt the dour certainties of pictures, property, and power.

But I really resist categories – that naming is a closing down of meaning. Women’s art, political art – those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I’m resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist.

GIVE YOUR BRAIN AS MUCH ATTENTION AS YOU DO YOUR HAIR AND YOU’LL BE A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER OFF.

There are so many moments and works that influence us in what we do. Movies, music, TV and, most importantly, the profound everydayness of our lives.

Fashion is everywhere and about everything. It is folly, vanity and the fun of it all. It is disguise, innuendo, and cunning. It is mean, gorgeous and ambitious, and definitely the last word for the next few seconds.

I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity.

If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture – not only national culture but global culture.

I think pictures and words have the power to make us rich or poor.

If I bring up political power, personal power, it sounds like they’re my terms, and they’re not.

I worked with someone else’s photos; I cropped them in whatever way I wanted and put words on top of them. I knew how to do it with my eyes closed. Why couldn’t that be my art?

It’s hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.

Do you know why language manifests itself the way it does in my work? It’s because I understand short attention spans.

You want it, you buy it, you forget it.

The reason why bookstores are going out of business in the States is that people just can’t focus on longer narratives now – even narrative film is in crisis in many ways, unless it’s an adventure film.

Like a pet fish unaware of the fishbowl it lives in, each of us inherently discriminates against young people without knowing it.

Trust me on this one. I know this from personal experience.

Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which the sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced.

The world is impermanent. [All things change. Knowing this helps you see the end of any difficulty and thereby have hope.]

Defending territories, defending everything institutional in the belief that they defend Islam.

He pressed a kiss to my ear. “Do you feel stretched? Can you tell I’ve been inside you?” I nodded, feeling my knees go a little weak from the tone in his voice. “Good. I like knowing you can feel where I’ve been.

Maybe not this year or the next but one day they’d end up married. In this lifetime and every one after it. Just knowing that I’d get to watch them find each other and fall in love in every life made me smile.

It’s true that the best way of knowing yourself is to put yourself into different situations.