Amanda Harlech

“I think fashion, mishandled, can be quite toxic. It becomes about image and the cult of celebrity. I think when an artist is seen at a lot of parties as a celebrity, I find that worrying. I think it can limit them.”

“People think of me as a stereotype: muse, privileged, decorative. Classically, the muses were the inspiration. They'd come and go - they wouldn't actually make things, get their hands dirty. I don't think I'm a muse, although I think I can help pull a trigger. I really like getting my hands dirty.”

“I think the artistic process comes from disorder. When you are happy, it's not always a feeling that you can identify. It's like a dog sitting in front of a fire. Pain isolates you, but it can also clarify things.”

“I am not good wife material because I'm fiercely independent and like to go off and do my own thing.”

“Contemporary culture is like the weather - we have to be open to it. I don't like the way it is dismissed or closed down.”

“I don't think I am a proud person, but I think my children are incredible... I think I am part of that.”

“I think the most destructive thing is fear: when people don't want to say what they think.”

“Writing is something I should have done more of, it's a form of coming home.”

“As women, we need to remember: don't be a doormat!”

“I'm interested in stories. I think I'm a bit of a pathfinder.”

“We have to keep an eye on the future with a sense of the past in every passing moment of the present.”

“Our idea of happiness, some of it, is very tied to the cult of celebrity: there is this golden, wonderful life that I want, and if I dress like that, I'm on my way there.”

“I didn't want to get divorced, but at the point where your children are part of it, you have to do something. I would really love it not to have happened because it haunts you, it will never go away, and it is probably the biggest failure, and I have to live with that.”

“You know that gap between where you are and where you'd like to be? Within that gap, there is an ache and an aspirational leap, which is very good for writing.”

“My earliest childhood memory is watching the sunlight through a jar of amber full of wasps.”

“Couture has a power that ready-to-wear can never have; the attention of les petites mains as they sew; all that love and belief goes into the cloth. That's what you feel when you wear it.”

“At home, I love reaching out into that absolute silence, when you can hear the owl or the wind.”

“I think I am really easygoing. Well... as I was about halfway through that sentence, I thought, 'No, actually you're really picky.' But the things I ask for are really simple to do.”

“I do quite a lot of art, with a small 'a'. I guess that is how I was dredged up, with paints and crayons. Even when I was at nursery, I knew instinctively how to mix colours, how to make purple or orange.”