Quotes from Tracey Emin

But I knew there was something better: there was an outside – an outside of me.

I smell of decay, the acrid smell of a lonely person, a person with no respect or regard for themselves.

I didn't know what strange games were. To me, it was all part of living. A strange living. I had never known the truth so I had never cared for the truth, rationality or reason. I lived in a world of dreams, good and bad.

The Margate of my mind has the most beautiful sunsets that stretch across the entire horizon. Sharp white cliffs divide a charcoal blue sea from the hard reality of the land.

Margate's never been easy, always hard. 'If you want a dirty weekend, go to Margate,' I always say. You can be as dirty as you like. Van Gogh and Turner, Ronnie Biggs and the Krays all went there. Romans, Vikings, Hell's Angels, teds, mods, rockers and punks, they all fought there.

I wasn't a kid. I was thirteen: I had been raped, I had lost my front teeth and I had suffered disillusionment with life. But I knew there was something better: there was an outside – an outside of me. And somewhere that wasn't Margate. Yet I owe so much to that place I grew up, mainly because it is so beautiful. And what is so fantastic and beautiful is the sunset, and that is free.

When I was 14 – 15 there was nothing to do in my life but dancing and sex. I'd go to nightclubs and dance then I'd meet someone and have sex. It was fine and easy. Nothing to do but think with my body. Like a bird I thought I was free.

He'd kind of vanished off the face of the earth. A difficult thing to do in Margate, a derelict seaside town where there was nothing to do but blend in with the general decay: bum around, fuck, be fucked, fight and wish your life away.

Anyways, I suddenly had an urge to put my watch on. Time or no time, I wanted some worldly security. That's what watches do: they keep us bound to this world. Dreams don't have time. Neither does sleep, nor death. That's why it is sometimes good to wear a watch.

Strange living. I always had a strange life. Never knowing what was true, living in a world of dreams. Christ, I told myself, I've got to get up. But with the weight of my thoughts, I felt I couldn't breathe. Why did I keep taking on all of this – this shit and keep feeling it even after it had passed through me a hundred million times?

M. Masculinity, Manhood. What makes a man a Man? As a woman at the dawn of mid-life, I can confess to having learned, for sure, that I have more testosterone in my right foot then most men have surging around their entire bodies. You don't have to be born with balls to have balls. There is spunk and there is mental spunk, and it's the latter that gets me up in the mornings, that makes me change my life, that moves the world around me.

I'm not trying to find another thing that's wrong with me, but I'm such a nice person, and I have a couple of drinks and I'm really good fun and then I'm really not fun.

I want to spend my life with someone and do nice things and go on adventures, read books and have nice food and celebrate things. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in the bedroom like some people who just go to bed and never get out again.

If I didn't want to work for a couple of years I wouldn't have to - it's a great feeling, to know I'm doing it because I want to do it.

What is truth? Truth doesn't really exist. Who is going to judge whether my experience of an incident is more valid than yours? No one can be trusted to be the judge of that.

I is for me. I cannot believe how much I have fucked up in love. At least, physically. I don't believe I have mentally. For some weird reason, all of my tiny horrors have been liveable. I have not died. In fact, life has become better. Through age and experience there has come realisation: life is worth living.

I always loved 'Gullivers Travel's. A giant man in a tiny world, a tiny man in a giant world. And there is one line I remember, though perhaps I imagined it: 'I like a tiny man with a lot of spunk in him.' Well, I'm a tiny man and so have I. And I can prove it.

And all the things I think, and all the things I believe, are making me cry.

The flies were in love with me: they loved me like I was a piece of donkey shit.

When Paul went to prison, I cried at first. Not for Paul but for me. Then I started to behave strangely. Wild. Restless.

Me and my mum send most of our time on the phone discussing EastEnders: Grant and Tiffany; the prospect of Sharon returning to the square, perhaps with Michelle Fowler, both with babies, both fathered by Grant; the happy irony of Michelle and Sharon being truly related. We all slip into these unreal worlds as a release from the daily drudgery.

Strangely enough, you'll find the less sex a person has, the less they masturbate. I have a close friend who assures me she has only masturbated five times in her life. Of course, there is the theory that she doesn't have a vagina. Then again, I know for a fact that most of her daily life, including her work, is wrapped up in fantasy. Leaving her eyes crystal clear.

I found a way to visit without fear, exorcising all ghosts from the past to fill my mind with something mind-blowing.

I tried to tell people about it, but I was drunk: they thought I was talking in riddles or metaphors.