Sebastian Horsley

I think you are born, and I think you die. I have a pragmatic nature, but I yearn to believe.

I am a fraud. I have cobbled together my personality from hundreds of little bits. I am simultaneously the most genuine and the most artificial person you will ever meet.

People who have a reputation for being evil are usually good.

I am half-Byronic, half-moronic; part-shaman, part-showman.

A woman is supposed to have curves like an old Bentley, not like some old bike.

If I hear that people are litigious, I immediately dismiss them.

Everyone says Oscar Wilde was a dandy, but he wasn't - he was an aesthete. He took pleasure in food and stuff like that. Dandyism is much more austere - much more Calvinistic, more neurotic - it oscillates between narcissism and neurosis.

If someone thinks I'm posh, it just shows how lowly they are. Some people think I went to Eton. I'm far too stupid to get into Eton.

Dandyism is a lie which reveals the truth, and the truth is that we are what we pretend to be.

Being a dandy is a condition rather than a profession. It is a defense against suffering and a celebration of life.

I regret everything. But so what? At least I have cause.

The problem with compassion is that it is not photogenic.

Pain can be vitalising; it gives intensity in the place of vagueness and emptiness. If we don't suffer, how do we know that we live?

An artist has to go to every extreme, to stretch his sensibility through excess and suffering in order to feel and to communicate more.

My grandfather was a practising Quaker. My father was a nihilist. But nihilism, if you like, is the beginning of faith anyway.

I live my life like an open book, even though it's open on the wrong page.

I do a lot of things for effect, which is not to say I am superficial, but that I know how to put ideas across.

I keep the shutters closed because I like to work in a hermetic environment. I like mirrors. When you look out of the window, all you see is ugliness, but when you look in the mirror all you see is beauty.

I like living sparsely. In the main room, there's no furniture - no tables, no chairs, no coffee table - not even a decaffeinated coffee table.

I used to have about a hundred suits in my late twenties and early thirties when my stock was riding high and I was rich.

I like to remind myself that every morning I'm making a choice to live.

Think of how many boring, blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretion of me.

I consider myself to be very correct and proper: an upright citizen.

Why shouldn't I be allowed to say stupid, outrageous things?

If I want to dislike women, I should be allowed to. As it happens, I love them. Women to me are privately worshipped and publicly disdained.