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" When people listen to music, they don't worry about what it means like they do about art. Everyone's an expert on music, but with art, I always find I have to defend its existence. "

Cornelia Parker

People

Worry

Art

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

" I was my father's sidekick, in a way. He was a very dominant, forceful character. "

Cornelia Parker

Way

Father

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

" If I was prime minister, I would declare a state of emergency on climate change. "

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

" I'm from a working-class background - I had free school meals all my life and then spent six years in art school. "

" When I was a kid, my mother used to say, 'You always want to be different.' I couldn't work out what she meant. I was just trying to be myself. "

" I don't mind getting older; I just don't want to be in pain. "

" My father was a very controlling man, and it was a big relief to get away from that. "

" I started doing sculpture rather than painting. I was halfway through my degree, and I hadn't really done any introduction courses in sculpture... I'd missed all the technical stuff. I didn't really know how to weld or forge or carve or model. I'd sort of evaded all those technique classes, so I had no technique. "

" I do think there is a link between the accidental art the sciences produce and the deliberate art the artist creates, but I can't help feeling that the innocence of the accidental art of science has a power and curious beauty that artists are hard-pressed to match. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" To make large, site-specific work as an artist is usually quite tortuous; there are so many boxes you have to tick. "

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

" If people say, 'You can't do that,' you can be sure I will do my utmost to do it. "

" 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. "

" I don't want to feel like an ambulance chaser, but very often, when I hear about a fire, my first instinct is to make a piece of art out of it. "

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

" 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. "

" 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? "

" I try to avoid the 'art world' as much as possible. It's too much about fads and fashions - who's getting the best prices at auction and things like that. "

" 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

" 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. "

" Dust, in the end, settles on everything. "

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

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