A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

V is like a mythical situation. It’s an allegory for what could happen. V has philosophies within it that actually warn against things like that happening.

I’m not an expert, but I want to be.

So war is an extremely sad business, because the majority of people don’t want to be in it.

I don’t think you can lightly paint a picture. It’s an activity I take very seriously.

They arranged for me to go to The Royal Academy, to study with one of the best life drawing professors in the world. That’s how I learned.

I don’t really have a historical overview of my work at all. I’m not an art historian. I don’t see that there’s this period and that period.

I’m lucky. I’m quite popular in this business and people know me. Most of the time there’s somebody that wants me to do something.

At this present time, matter is still the best way to think of architecture, but I’m not so sure for very long. The computer is radicalizing the way we think about our world.

But on the broader issues, the injustices in the world. You know, that would be something pretty much anyone would agree on I guess.

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It’s a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I’m one of nature’s shoppers.

When we were talking about this, an idea for this master vigilante, it was an urban guerilla. One of my ideas was that he would be a member of the police force who turned on...

If you’re into architecture and you’re from the West, everything is hors d’oeuvres for working to rebuild the Temple. Ultimately you’re led there. You can’t escape it.

So when I make my drawings, although I may not be consciously basing it on somebody or basing it on my experiences, I expect to a certain extent I am.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

Very rarely are we directing or cutting someone else’s boards. We concept, direct, shoot, animate and edit almost everything that comes through here.

I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.

I’ve always been a liberal and I’ve always had strong socialist leanings.

I deeply believe in pluralism. I believe in the close proximity of multiple systems or agnostic systems.

England was incredibly dull and everything exciting seemed to be in America.

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.

You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon.

It’s difficult to find a house with no map at 3 o’clock in the morning in a foreign country and where you don’t speak the language.

So, I created these creatures called The Frightened Ones which in the film you see do have mask like kind of heads and they run beneath the ground to hide. Which is what in fact...

We spend more time developing means of escaping our troubles than we do solving the troubles we’re trying to escape from.

We are pushing hard to find quality advertising clients.

I hate painting.

If you’re working as a team, not just as an individual artist, you need to both have your creative freedom, it’s very important.

I feel most strongly about Jerusalem, because architects ultimately have to address that city.

How do I feel about war? Well anybody I guess, I hope, I don’t like it.

In England, it’s thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.

MTV lets us do whatever we want. For me, there is freedom in serving an experienced client who knows what they want and has the money to do it. MTV is that for us.

There were shelters underneath the ground everywhere. They were called Anderson Shelters, and we would go down into them if the siren went.

Alan is a great guy, a terrific guy. We haven’t worked together since then, and he’s always working with different artists. I think he sees different dimensions he can see from different guys.

What I feel bad about is not having published very much in the last few years.

I look at my pictures, and I think, ‘Well, how did I do that?’

It’s absolutely of no importance who or what V was under the mask. He isn’t a who or a what, he’s an idea. The thing is, you couldn’t continue it. Now and then the idea...

I had to learn to see the world. I followed the teachers wherever they were and I didn’t care about the institution, it was more about the person.

I have been to several wars to draw. I went to Vietnam. And made drawings in Vietnam during that period of the war there, and found that to be a very very sad situation.

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute.

Politics are beautiful. They enable a community to live collectively with one another. It’s not about stabbing each other in the back; it’s about enabling people to reach their dreams and pursue happiness.

Well I was an asthmatic child. So that for most of my childhood I was in bed. Bedridden.

Alan was always interested in politics in a major way. He actually believes that anarchy is a politically viable system, but I don’t. I was always interested in putting forward the ideas that represented my...

When I left school I went on trip around the world-I only got as far as Australia, but like a bloody fool I cut it short because of a girl. It’s probably one of my...

I once was interviewed and got so exasperated that I said, ‘What do you want, a shopping list?’ They kept asking, ‘What’s in this picture?’

Kickback is a police thriller which I wrote. I’m very proud of it. I did it in two parts for France because when I wrote it, there wasn’t the audience demand for crime stuff that...

I have a book of buildings from 25,000 BC. These are huts built out of mammoth bones. These buildings were beautifully made, from the bones of the body into shelter.

I haven’t done a book for about 3 or 4 years now.

Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten.