I started as a tap dancer in Durban, which is on the coast. That was an important part of growing up, turning on the radio in the morning and hearing Zulu singing or the news in Zulu.

Performance art is really about the sociology of the artist, where ideas come from, and the confluence of those ideas.

As far as I'm concerned, the 20th century was performance-driven, but for some reason, the critics and historians didn't know how to integrate that.

There's a moment when you say, "Okay, I'm not going to become a dancer. I'm not going to become a painter." So in a sense, I ended up writing about those big conflicts that I felt.

It was very interesting growing up in South Africa then. It was extraordinary. It was multiculturalism before it became an issue.

I had met American artists and just couldn't believe their energy. London was always such a struggle to get anything going.

From day one, my idea was always to use the gallery as this animated place to discover culture in a much bigger way.

I was often the only white girl in the Indian dance class. That felt funny, but doing Indian dance was great.

My father was a doctor. He was just a great guy, a gentle humanist, and an old-fashioned GP. He'd get up at three in the morning to see patients in different areas if they needed him.

What is a goal without a purpose?

The trauma said, ‘Don’t write these poems.Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.

Father, you are asking me to sacrifice the only girl I love so you can openly have the woman you love.

Gnaw your own bone gnaw at it bury it unearth it gnaw it still.

It was almost painful, I thought, to have a heart so swollen with gratitude and what must have been pure, untainted happiness. I wanted to live inside the feeling forever.

Do you love this God who is everything, or do you just love everything He gives you?

It seems inevitable that the magic of the written word will fade.

You go in and meet the head of BBC One and get an assurance about not dumbing down. And then, of course a few months later, he's been replaced by someone you haven't met.

I love an act that makes fun of the situation, and of course makes fun of yourself. That's important, you can't take yourself too seriously.

The focus of Satan's efforts is always the same: to deceive us into believing that the passing pleasures of sin are more satisfying than obedience.