"I believe in fairies. Although I can't prove they exist, nobody has ever managed to prove to me that they don't."

“He opened the door that so many of us went through, the door of possibility, by saying anything an artist makes is art.”

“My dealer was a friend of the Beatles and the Stones, and he suggested they used a fine artist. I talked to the Beatles at length about what the cover would be. I worked out it would show the moment after they had played in a bandstand in the park. My big contribution was the life-size cutouts, the magic crowds.”

“Sgt Pepper made me more famous but it did not change me as an artist.”

“Most artists go potty as they get older: dafter and madder as they get more celibate. So I am consciously going to do that.”

“I don’t think artists should be sponsored. You should not rely on grants. You either make a success of your art or you don’t. I worked as an artist for a number of years without making much money – I have never had any financial backing in that way. Things are now very good for me but for a lot of the time things were not.”

“Art in Britain is in a very healthy state. The artists of my generation and older are at their best — people like Howard Hodgkin and Frank Auerbach. The YBAs are still very strong, and it's exciting to wonder what the next generation will bring.”