"I say to people I'm in my late period. Obviously, as you get older you're in your late period anyway, but to decide you are becomes a concept. It's related to the concept of my retirement, which was about the fact that I'd shown at the greatest gallery in the world and I'd never top that... So, I retired from the jealousy of other artists, and ambition. I could alternatively have become a Buddhist or something — it is a kind of beatific state."

“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.”