Quotes from Cornelia Parker

Some people separate their work and home lives, but I love the idea of having my studio and house in the same space.

If you cut art from school, you're going to have a lot more looted shops.

I gave birth aged 45, which was a bit of a shock.

I went to a quite macho art school in the 1970s, and while everyone was making hulking big sculptures, I was making things out of bits of paper.

Our cultural industries are our biggest export, our biggest manufacturing base. Every pound spent on art education brings disproportionately large returns. It's the biggest bang for our buck. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. In fact, the more you put in, the greater the successes for the U.K. economy.

If I'm not doing the work I want, I usually suffer a psychological allergic reaction and get ill.

Artists and scientists both think outside the box. They've got to come with genius experiments or ideas to expose the most interesting phenomena.

A lot of my stuff just wasn't saleable. I still don't do private or corporate commissions. It becomes like interior design. I don't enjoy it. The process makes me feel physically sick.

As you get older, things don't work as well. I do Pilates, and that helps.

I do 10 minutes of Pilates every morning if I'm in the mood.

My father wanted a boy badly and didn't get one, so I was happy to be the surrogate boy. I was very strong, always doing manual labour.

Living in a warehouse is great - but after a while, you just want a garden.

Maybe it's my Catholic upbringing - I grew up thinking that Armageddon was just around the corner - now I know it is, with global warming and all. I can keep it at bay by doing the work. It's a sort of reverse sympathetic magic. I'm always doing it so it doesn't happen to me.

After leaving college, I was in a show called Sculpture by Women where I was asked to talk about my history of victimisation in art, and I genuinely didn't think I had been victimised. Although I obviously believe in a lot of the feminist aspirations, I was wary about being dragged down by the politics of it.

You make an open-ended proposition and the audience completes it somehow. That's what you hope an artwork to be-a constantly living thing.

Who thought it would be a good idea to undermine art in the school curriculum? Who thought studying the history of our visual culture was a waste of time? Who thought that only private schools should have that privilege? Was it someone who said we don't need experts?

My mother became mentally unwell with schizophrenia when I was in my teens... We couldn't watch television because she thought the people on TV were sending her messages. She thought there were hidden cameras everywhere, so we had to have the curtains drawn.

Design impacts me in everything I do. Because, as I say, everything I own is designed. So the building I live in, the objects I choose to boil water in for example, even drinking vessels.

I don't want my work to be issue-based. I want people to be able to read it in lots of different ways.

If you conceal things, they become more charged.

Art and creativity are crucial, whether you're a mathematician, a scientist, or an artist.

I am 5ft 10in. I got my height from my dad, who was very rangy. I like being tall.

I need eight hours of sleep, but I never get it except at weekends.

I was involved in a serious accident driving in torrential rain at midnight in Cardiff. I was only doing five miles an hour, but because I couldn't see very well, I crossed a junction and collided with another car that was driving very fast. I ended up in hospital for six weeks with a shattered pelvis.