So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.
I realised that you couldn't use the tools of yesterday to communicate today's world. Basically, that was the big light that went on in my head.
When it comes to the British monarchy, I prefer to be seduced by an image than presented with a real person. It's kind of a Warhol thing.
My Mum brought me up to believe that if you look after the pennies then the pounds look after themselves, and I could never do it.
But I'm more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg's my main influence.
Whenever I've been well-known or hitting the press, I've always had to get my credit card out to prove I'm Damien Hirst.
I had a passport where I wrote 'artist' under 'occupation' and I remember thinking, 'That's it, it's proved!'
But the answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live.
Being able to draw means being able to put things in believable space. People who don't draw very well can't do that.
I'm a bit claustrophobic, I don't like crowds, I live by the sea - that's what I see when I come out of my house in Bridlington.
Television is becoming a collage - there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.
East Yorkshire, to the uninitiated, just looks like a lot of little hills. But it does have these marvelous valleys that were caused by glaciers, not rivers. So it is unusual.
I see the iPad as a wonderful new drawing medium, but I am at a loss as to how to make it pay.
I worked in the NHS as a hospital orderly during my national service, and people thought it was a noble service. But over the years it's lost its humanity.
Social issues have been used to distract Americans from their own self interests since Nixon's southern strategy, and now people are paying the price.
George Lucas wanted this moving camera for all of the photography in Star Wars. He was willing to take a risk with the concepts that I advanced with regard to ways for doing that.
When developing an idea, I remind myself not to start with compromise. I envision the ideal manifestation of the idea, as if I had no limits in resources, materials, or permission.
I used to hang out with Salvador Dali a lot. He was such a nice man. I really liked his wife Gala, too. People say that she was tricky, but she was never difficult with me.
I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.
The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious - and I do - there's room for all kinds of possibilities that I don't know how you prove one way or another.
No, ramen's not good for you. But in Japan, our favorite thing to do after drinking all night, especially in Sapporo where it's freezing cold, is to go to the ramen place at two, three in the morning.
