“When I was better known than her, she put my name in that tent. I was asked to do Celebrity Big Brother, but why should I? We live in an age where fame is not related to what you do.”

One of my biggest problems in life has been my inability to lie.

I gave up drinking lots of whiskey and began to practice yoga and meditation. As a result I am not dead.

I’ve always liked New York, as I like towns with an edge and New York has a European feel, so when I came to play music here in the ’80s it was a surprise to me.

I liked drawing and painting, because the only failure would be to listen to the doubters who wanted me to stop drawing and painting because ‘you aren’t going to make a living doing that.’ I liked looking in art books at the work of painters.

I loved moustaches. I used to draw myself with one. When I was 14, I was really into war and Van Gogh.

Bowie and McCartney arrived, and the biscuits and caviare started and I left immediately. I don’t like shouting across rooms, with people in shiny suits who look like used-car salesmen.

I’m going to get a pair of wire-snips, and I’ve also started a new campaign to have blank CDs on jukeboxes so you can play the silence.

I think that the mythology of Van Gogh’s life, and the beauty of his paintings, is unstoppable.

Failure is fantastic, because you meet yourself and get to know your limitations. This is how I express myself, and I can’t do it any other way.

The most challenging work I’ve seen of late is by The British Art Resistance. Their document, ‘A Call for Heroes in an Age of Cowards’, is apt in these days of witless chancers.

I did not like prizes at school. I didn’t like tests or exams, or the 11+, or O-levels. Later I hated B.A.s and M.A.s. The reason I hated them is that I don’t like being tested, failed or falsely praised by anyone.

It is an artist’s duty to be on the wrong end of the see-saw.

I’ve not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I’ll listen to ‘Spiral Scratch’ by the Buzzcocks, or ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.

We had the same kind of unemployment here as they had in the worst hit places in the North and you’re meant to be on a cushy wicket in the South.

My favourite things are jokes, friendliness and feeling comfortable.

I don’t spend a lot of time working if I can help it.

Your siblings are the only people in the world who know what it’s like to have been brought up the way you were.

Sharing is the answer for humanity. When we share we recognize that God is our brother, and unless we have that trust created by sharing, then nothing can be done.

I know I am–that simplest bliss The millions of my brothers miss. I know the fortune to be born, Even to the meanest wretch they scorn.

Although my Dad was a talented calligrapher and both of my younger brothers were successful, I was the first one in my family to graduate from high school.

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.

There’s no “brothers” when it comes to white people. We are just complete individuals. We don’t care about each other. He’s not my brother; my brother lives in Ohio – I don’t know that guy.

[The Bytyqi Brothers were] American citizens and we have been seeking answers to why no one’s been held accountable for these atrocities. [Family members] expect our government to do everything we can.

She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard.