About herself“Provocative subjects provoke me, and I need that. Otherwise, I'll get bored”.
“I live like those who don't work. My luxury consists in doing nothing.”
“I am very changing and....loyal. I am not a woman of betrayal.”
“I know I intimidate quite a lot of people because I get quite fierce and I look impenetrable, which is obviously not the case. It's a form of protection.”
"Our parents hadn't lived those kind of lives at all. I was from a middle-class family, but suddenly class wasn't important any more and we could explore creative fields that we'd never been able to before. It was a very intense few years for people living in London at that time. And I was very much a part of it."
“I have a playful, childlike side that only my close friends and family sees.”
“In my early 20s, I travelled a lot and went very deeply into Buddhism and yoga. We are not just material beings, there is that other side which I hope people at the end of the 20th century will realise is the only thing that is going to save us.”
“I have never gone against my nature, opposite to what I am. I cannot lie”.
“I was steeped in French culture from 9 to 12. I went to a Catholic school with my sister without speaking a word of French and felt very isolated. I was completely silent for about six months. It was actually quite traumatic, but I got another culture for which I am very grateful. I now think and dream in French. But I like reading in English best, it touches me more.”
"Actually I'm very shy. While I'm working I'm very open, that's what I do. But you don't know what it takes out of me to do it, do you?"
“I'm not very good at talking and being with people, and being gregarious and outgoing. I love people, but I have great difficulty doing it. I think the reason I have secrets is because there are a lot of things I haven't been able to let out and I'm able to let them out through the screen and this medium.”
That [Afghanistan in the mid-1960s] was about being with moving people. I lived with the Gypsies for quite a long time. And I didn’t speak their language. So that was about communicating without necessarily understanding in words. It was learning to live with silence. Which I had learned to live with as a child. So it was not that unfamiliar and it was quite comfortable to me. It was before all the atrocities happened in that country. The country was wild, and beautiful, and open as it had been for hundreds of years.[Scotland for two months in the mid-1960s] I learned how to meditate. I learned how to be still. I learned how to spend quite a few hours not talking and just being silent. That was enormous, to learn that.
“It sounds clichéd to talk about the importance of holding on to your beliefs and intensity. But the clichés are true. I've never sold out, ever.”
From interviews
