Women Born In The 1960s

"I would never ever amount to anything without him. That’s what he told me."

"I was making very aggressive provocative paintings. Whether the Rachel paintings, or the Diana paintings, I've sensed over the three or four years that I've been in getting press attention, I've sensed that it has not been that long since the woman painter was not allowed in the Royal Academy, and not allowed to paint nude men, and thee is such a huge body of work that men have made, versus the small body of work made by women, that I am not surprised to get this response."

"I will look through 200 photographs of Kate Moss and there will be just one that I connect with for some reason, maybe because of the composition or something in the eye... Something touches me and I know I have to paint it, in the way a child knows it wants something."

"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 had been painting Kate Moss for a long time, both before the time of her crisis and during it. I felt very strongly for her - she's a hard-working mum and it seemed as if suddenly the world turned against her. Holy water cannot help you now is painted in very warm pretty colours..."

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

"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."

"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."

"The freedom is far more important than the money. The endgame is to be an extremely famous artist in lots of museums all around the world so lots of people can see my work for free. I know what I'm making, I know it's good. I will reserve the right to paint the [bombed] bus or anything that is shocking in life. If someone wants to come and shoot me because they find that offensive, they can. As an artist, if you can't take that freedom, you're a wanker."

"I have always been drawn to the beauty and the tragedy of Diana’s life which I hope I’ve captured in this new series of paintings. I wanted to show her"

"I hope that whoever stole it, stole it because they loved it, and not because of all the hype."

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

"The art world is really exactly the same as the sex industry: you have to be completely on guard, you will get shafted, fucked over left, right and centre. And you will also meet charming, wonderful people like a rainbow at the end of the day."

"I have always been ambitious, no doubt about that. I always felt like I had to reach the dizzy heights of fame and success or whatever the heights are of a number of given professions I have dabbled in, to prove myself, "Stripper of the year" a bafta or whatever, for me it was by creating something interesting and entertaining or moving, but not by compromising the thing I was creating, that thing had to reach those heights, I guess it's about being accepted and loved a bit or a lot."

"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."

"You’re very vulnerable when you’re naked. The psychology is a bit weird. It’s all in the eyes between the two people so you’ve got to be confident. You’ve really got to pretend you are enjoying it. I tended to have lots of conversations with lonely old men and to meet lots of nutters as well. I have incredible tolerance for darkness. I can take on board quite a lot of damaged people, but it takes its toll psychologically."

"I always wanted her to say, "I love you, I’ll stand by you, you are very important to me," but she never did. She loved me inside, but I didn’t feel it."

"All those people who derided me did me a favour, because now I don't care what anyone says about me. I feel I am now able to be a really powerful painter, to take on the mantle of the US male expressionist."

"My background has been pretty abusive, nothing extreme, mainly psychological. There have been a few times when I have been slapped by partners and I have slapped back. I have enormous sympathy for those affected by violence. We need to progress beyond violence towards women and not cancel it out by saying women are also violent towards men."

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

"No, it doesn’t mean anything, does it? People occasionally ask for your autograph or say, ‘I saw you in the paper’, but that doesn’t mean anything at all."

"I heard Postgate's Desert Island Discs last year and I was very impressed by him as a man, and thoroughly enjoyed his choice of "When the Saints Come Marching In". Listening to a creative visionary, one's life suddenly feels exciting again - you just want to get making, and doing. Thank God for people like Oliver Postgate - when you discover them, life takes on a whole new meaning. What an incredible man."

"I identify with people like Diana who just want to be loved by everybody. If somebody doesn’t like me I find that very upsetting."

"I didn't think anyone really liked what I was doing and I literally have the bailiffs at my door."

"I’ve lived on my own since I was 13 and not been to school and brought a son up who’s now 18 and run theatre companies and bought a butcher’s shop, learnt guitar by myself, taught myself to sing and that sort of stuff."

"This is a dark painting with a bit of violence because I was very affected by Diana's death. I cried all day because I liked her, warts and all. Most of all I liked the way that she wanted to be loved and didn't mind admitting it."

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

"I want to be with my friends. I'm drunk. I want to phone my mum. She's going to be embarrassed by this conversation. I don't care. I don't give a fuck about it."

"When I think about sex it makes me realise how alone I feel."

"There is no comparison between him and me; he developed a whole new way of making art and he's clearly in a league of his own. It would be like making comparisons with Warhol."

"When it comes to words I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in art – and it's my words that actually make my art quite unique."

"Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck! Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!"

"I think the difference between me and some of the other YBAs [Young British Artists] was that I was ambitious for the work, and not ambitious for myself."

"I make all this stuff in the studio, but I also work on these white elephants — like House or Untitled Monument — things that are incredibly ambitious, take an awful long time to do, involve a lot of controversy, an awful lot of people, and don't make any money particularly, but it's just because I need to make them."

"I became aware of Louise Bourgeois in my first or second year at Brighton Art College. One of my teachers, Stuart Morgan, curated a small retrospective of her work at the Serpentine, and both he and another teacher, Edward Allington, saw something in her, and me, and thought I should be aware of her. I thought the work was wonderful. It was her very early pieces, The Blind Leading the Blind, the wooden pieces and some of the later bronze works. Biographically, I don't really think she has influenced me, but I think there are similarities in our work. We have both used the home as a kind of kick-off point, as the space that starts the thoughts of a body of work. I eventually got to meet Louise in New York, soon after I made House. She asked to see me because she had seen a picture of House in the New York Times while she was ironing it one morning, so she said. She was wonderful and slightly kind of nutty; very interested and eccentric. She drew the whole time; it was very much a salon with me there as her audience, watching her. I remember her remarking that I was shorter than she was. I don't know if this was true but she was commenting on the physicality of making such big work and us being relatively small women. When you meet her you don't know what's true, because she makes things up. She has spun her web and drawn people in, and eaten a few people along the way."

"I don't want to make plop art — sculpture that just gets plopped down in places. I wouldn't want to litter every corner of the world with my sculpture."

"We still have prostitutes standing on our corner, and people crapping round the back of buildings. The charms are still there."

"I thought of a great way to celebrate my Finnish heritage at home. I'm going to look into opening a chain of strip clubs, and I'll call them Lapland!!!"

"Sexuality is an expression of our spirituality. Sex makes you get real."

"I love doing what I do, but I don't like seeing the finished product."

"Try as I might – in person and follow-up emails – I cannot get Anderson to condemn Hugh Hefner as a dirty old pervert: one who played a founding role in the industrialisation of "glamour" model exploitation. Anderson is loyal to a fault. She views Playboy as an academy of sorts."

"[The "decade" reference is to the 1990s] In case anyone is still on the fence about how toxic it was for women in the public eye in that decade, Anderson’s story lays it bare. Here’s an early exchange between young Anderson and an interviewer on NBC: "I’ve never sat across from an interview subject before and said, 'May we talk briefly about your breasts?'" Here's Larry King: "Have you ever had work done?" Anderson: "Why, yes, these are implants." King: "Oh, they are?" Anderson laughs: a mix of exasperation and embarrassment. King, aggressive: "Are they, or aren’t they?" Anderson, sighing: "Yes, they are.""

"My breasts have had a brilliant career. I've just tagged along for the ride."

"What's going on outside? It was really nice - all the fans out there with big signs."

"When I did TV shows and movies, the studios did demographic research. They were shocked to find that my audience isn't just men who are too drunk to turn off the TV after football. It's women, too. I don't know exactly why, other than that I've tried to remain true to myself for all these years. I have gone through a lot, and I've been open about it. Maybe they look at me and can see how you can grow up, have children, continue to be sexy, get married and divorced and, though you grew up poor, live the American dream. I'm very blessed. I'm happy for it all."

"Sorry. I'd much rather be gay than sleep with you just to prove I wasn't."

"Actors always have to fight for the good parts. There are so few good roles written for women each year, and when one is written like this every actress in town covets the role."

"It's an amazing feeling to know that life is actually growing inside your body. The first time you see the ultrasound and you see the little bones and you realise that it's part of you and it's in your care is life changing and this sort of protective instinct has taken over."

"I want to do roles that are fun and challenging and I want to try different things. I don't want to keep doing Monster's Ball over and over and over again. I want to keep doing my career the way that I was doing it before I won the Oscar."