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" 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. "

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" At times, I've been incapacitated by anxiety and unhappiness. You really know what joy is if you have experienced the opposite. "

Cornelia Parker

Been

Anxiety

You

" I can consciously say I like squashing things because I saw 'Tom and Jerry' films or Charlie Chaplin in 'Modern Times.' That's true. "

Cornelia Parker

True

Say

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

" Beauty is too easy. Often in my work, I take beautiful objects and do extreme things to them so that they are overlaid with something a bit more sinister and violent. "

Cornelia Parker

Beauty

Work

" 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? "

" The idea of going off to an office every day and 'putting on my art hat' doesn't appeal. "

" I didn't make any money out of my art until I was in my 40s, but it preserved my sanity and my freedom. "

" I didn't really know what I was looking at when I first came across Man Ray's 'Dust Breeding,' his photograph of a work by Marcel Duchamp called 'Large Glass.' It looked like an aerial photograph or a view through a microscope. "

" 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. "

Cornelia Parker

Thinking

Work

" My parents were always doubtful about my making a living as an artist. Even when I was up for the Turner Prize, my mum suggested I apply for a curator's job. "

Cornelia Parker

Always

Artist

" I like the idea of taking three-dimensional objects and making them two-dimensional so that they look like cartoons. "

Cornelia Parker

Idea

Look

" 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. "

" As a working-class girl, receiving free school dinners, I studied art history. Having never had the chance to visit art galleries, I devoured the knowledge, and it has served me well as a practising artist. "

" I feel our relationship to life, to the rest of the world, is very tenuous. It feels fleeting. "

" People often want the big dramatic works, not the smaller quieter ones, but I don't worry about how it fits together anymore; I just have to do it. I feel compelled to make a work: it's like an itch I have to scratch, and once it's been scratched, it goes away. "

" My iPhone has always been my sketchbook. "

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

" You only get one life, so it seems to me you might as well do the things you want to do. "

" Product design is fed by the avant-garde. "

" What was the most important thing I learned from Chomsky? That capitalism compels us to work ourselves to death in order to stuff our houses with things we don't need. Perhaps this is one thing art can do: create a new aesthetic, one of austerity. "

" I definitely didn't want children, because my childhood was not a very happy time. "

" I think it's quite obvious my work is made by a woman, because I have never wanted to make anything that is not ephemeral. But I definitely want to be thought of as an artist first. "

" 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. "

Cornelia Parker

Say

Water

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

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

" 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. "

" If it is good enough for Prince William and Kate, why is studying art history not good enough for the masses? "

" Violence is part of everybody's life, whether you like or express it or not. My work utilises all the energies that I have, and part of it is violent, and I'd rather it be out than in. "

Cornelia Parker

Life

You

" I am not a propagandist; my work has often had a political dimension but, hopefully, one that is not didactic and is open to interpretation. "

" 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. "