For me growing up, Christmas time was always the most fantastic, exciting time of year, and you'd stay up until three in the morning. You'd hear the parents wrapping in the other room but you knew that also, maybe, they were in collusion with Santa Claus.

I feel prematurely old. I'm actually having this major belated quarter-life crisis. I'm turning 30 in a couple of weeks. I've been thinking a lot about mortality. A lot about what I'm going to do with my life and how to enjoy it. One of the things I'm going to work on is being more spontaneous, letting go, embracing the beauty of come-what-may.

Fear runs our lives. It doesn't matter who you are. You have to understand your relationship with fear. Whether you're scared of getting into a relationship; or taking the new job; or a confrontation - you have to size fear up.

Mediocrity scares me. It's the fear of not being as good as you want to be. If you give over to that fear, it will sabotage you. As much as I can, I try to use that fear to guide me.

My father has been an actor since 1964. Things were tight a lot of the times, financially. It wasn't like a big romantic adventure.

I have a romantic vision of the beautiful delineation between TV and film that existed for so many years. I romanticize the studio system and movie stars as a whole, but obviously that's just anachronistic and probably a non-reality.

I enjoy dating. I love first dates. I think they're incredibly fascinating studies in human psychology. When you sit down across from someone on a first date and things are going alright, you talk objectives. We want to win each other over, so how do you win someone over? You have to put the best foot forward.

Work takes up a lot of my brain space. So when I work, it's one thing. I don't have a lot of time to think about dating.

I do like dating cynics - they tend to be incredibly funny.

Dating someone on the opposite end of the happy spectrum teaches you an incredible amount of patience.

I think we just live in a time of the selfie. So there's a sense that everyone's uniqueness and importance on this planet should be displayed and reveled in, and that there's kind of a piece of glory for everyone.

We come from fallible parents who were kids once, who decided to have kids and who had to learn how to be parents. Faults are made and damage is done, whether it's conscious or not. Everyone's got their own 'stuff,' their own issues, and their own anger at Mom and Dad. That is what family is. Family is almost naturally dysfunctional.

In high school, I once sang 'Let's Get It On' and 'Brown Sugar' with a band that included my English teacher and my math teacher.

Whether you're scared of getting into a relationship; or taking the new job; or a confrontation - you have to size fear up.

I like a deep sports massage - a casual beating up. I try to get them whenever I can, usually more if I'm getting in shape for a role.

Imagination is a pretty powerful thing, and when you're in the moment and you're riding a train and you're asked to look scared, I don't know, it just kind of works out. And in those moments where you're actually doing some of the stunts, then it's not so hard at all, because there's an actual fear there.

Life flies by, and it's easy to get lost in the blur. In adolescence, it's 'How do I fit in?' In your 20s, it's 'What do I want to do?' In your 30s, 'Is this what I'm meant to do?' I think the trick is living the questions. Not worrying so much about what's ahead but rather sitting in the grey area - being OK with where you are.

I'm so envious of that genetic wiring that immediately puts a smile on your face. My genetic wiring just puts creases in my eyebrows.

To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect.

I paint with shapes.

Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion.

Art is the window to man's soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within.

The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.

Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a bachelor.

The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary.

Women's art, political art - those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I'm resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist.

Prominence is cool, but when the delusion kicks in it can be a drag. Especially if you choose to surround yourself with friends and not acolytes.

What makes the production of my work so expensive? The whole installation thing - the construction, the objects, the technology. It really adds up.

I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty.

Seeing is no longer believing. The very notion of truth has been put into crisis. In a world bloated with images, we are finally learning that photographs do indeed lie.

I like suggesting that 'we are slaves to the objects around us,' that 'plenty should be enough,' or that the 'buyer should beware,' within the context of conventional selling space.

I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity.

Although my art work was heavily informed by my design work on a formal and visual level, as regards meaning and content the two practices parted ways.

Even when I was a little girl, I remember going to the Museum of Modern Art. I think my parents took me there once or twice. And what I really remember is the design collection.

You don't take a photograph, you make it.

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.

There are worlds of experience beyond the world of the aggressive man, beyond history, and beyond science. The moods and qualities of nature and the revelations of great art are equally difficult to define; we can grasp them only in the depths of our perceptive spirit.

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.

Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.

To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.

No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.

Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.

In my mind's eye, I visualize how a particular... sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.

A picture book is a small door to the enormous world of the visual arts, and they're often the first art a young person sees.

We are so fortunate, as Australians, to have among us the oldest continuing cultures in human history. Cultures that link our nation with deepest antiquity. We have Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley that is as ancient as the great Palaeolithic cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux in Europe.