I like to watch old films. Meet Me in St Louis, Cul-de-Sac and Buffalo 66 are some of my favourites.

I do have a very, very big problem with someone who saw me coming and exploited me as a mascot.

A common misperception of me is that I am a victim. I am not a victim. I am just honest about how things affect me.

I think there is a total equality for me between painting a literary figure or Kate Moss or my Mum or a dog or a bird. To me, they are all absolutely equal.

Even in the most horrendous situations there is always something to smile about.

Perhaps the people I choose to paint are often objects of derision - celebrity is a bit of a put-down term, isn't it? But to me they are my world.

I'm looking forward to being old, to be able to accept what I am and become self-sufficient. Mid-forties is a good age and it's not too far away.

I like strong/vulnerable interesting women, and then sometimes I like painting beautiful men, like Kurt Cobain, or Mr Darcy.

I wanted my work to be seen for free in a public space, I want to be up there with Pollock and de Kooning, one of the big boys.

Books are my one luxury. I have a lot of large coffee-table-size art books, in the shelves above my bed, about people like Warhol, Basquiat and Velasquez.

On Christmas Day I'll head off for a couple of laps around the Serpentine, or a trek around the whole of Hyde Park. Or I'll walk right across town, with Curtis, my son Jamie's bull mastiff.

Our fellowship with people brings us closer to the Kingdom

Psychology cannot tell people how they ought to live their lives. It can however, provide them with the means for effecting personal and social change.

The sky is so tragically beautiful. A graveyard of stars.

What shall we do, what shall we do! Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves is like out of the frying pan and into the fire!

We could never go back to how things were on the day before 9/11, but maybe I could go back to who I was.

We as people have a purpose here to contribute to the Earth, to contribute to people's goodness and good life.

I was a bike rider, a photographer and a history student, probably in that order. (On his early years)

Columbia students called me a baby killer, but remained silent for Ahmadinejad. I'm not sure if that was out of fear for the Iranian president or admiration.

And the person who loves wholeheartedly feels free.

If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing . . . then you are a writer.