I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.
Writers and filmmakers have this age-old relationship to the material.
Whether it's Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde, they're brilliant with genius bon mots. Of course, I find them extraordinary.
I know I'm part of the changing process of the way we look at things.
When I was thirteen, I had a nervous breakdown, and I was put into this grown-up mental hospital with all these 50-, 60-year-old men and women. This big, Victorian mental house. There were like five boys in there, all my age, looked after by this woman who was 22 or 23. And it was like "Empire of the Sun" meets "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-type of arrangement where you've got this young boy overcoming and becoming heroic in the face of this awful place.
I found my friends very amusing the first time because they are funny and amusing. They really are because they're people who've got everything. They're sort of like camp caricatures of what you expect an aristocrat should be: vicious, rude, caustic unpleasantries.
I'm part of an industry that everybody wants to be a part of. I do hang out with a lot of sort of powerful, interesting people like Bella Freud or Jay Joplin or Tracey Emin. I'm part of that group of people. Brit artists who are doing things. That's what I do. Some of them happen to be aristocrats.
If I seem to be reckless with myself,It's the fault of no one. All things have a placeUnder the moon as well as the sun.
War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars.
Some people we define as trolls are just critics. Sometimes they have a point. And I hear them. But for the ones who comment "I want to kill you in your sleep," I respond to them too.
My life has changed. I'm not walking around any more wishing I wasn't me, which was the case at one time.