“I think the difference between me and some of the other YBAs [Young British Artists] was that I was ambitious for the work, and not ambitious for myself.”

“I am an ambitious person and I consider myself as still quite young and I am convinced that I still have time to realize my ambitions.”

“You think me ambitious: ambition, alas! is composed of more rugged materials. If I were ambitious, I should not for so many years have been a prey to all the hell of conscientious scruples.”

“I think I benefited from being equal parts ambitious and curious. And of the two, curiosity has served me best.”

“One criticizes in others what one recognizes and despises in oneself. For example, an artist who is revolted by another’s ambitiousness.”

“I was freakishly ambitious. I didn't want to be a child. I wanted my own flat, to work and be a grown up.”

“Ambitious men never believe others aren’t the same.”

“Anyone would think paintings were made like speculations on the stock market, out of the frictions of ambitious young people… …it sharpens the mind, but clouds your judgement.”

“Ambitious young women today are taught to ignore or suppress every natural instinct, if it conflicts with the feminist agenda posed on them. All literary and artistic works, no matter how great, that document the ambivalence of female sexuality they are trained to dismiss as “misogynous.” In other words, their minds are being programmed to secede from their bodies … there is a huge gap between feminist rhetoric and women’s actual sex lives, where feminism is of little help except with a certain stratum of deferential, malleable, white middle-class men.”

“All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.”