SM: Let’s start with a trivial question: why Gilbert and George and not George and Gilbert? - Gilbert & George

We don't want to know what we are doing. It's much better not to know. You have to express yourselves, once you've finished a group of works you have to start all over again. It's extraordinary stuff - what an artist has to do. You finish a big group of works, then the next day you have to begin again. Forty years we've been doing that.

It is important to us to publish our art in books and catalogues, so as many people as possible are able to see it, but we also want them to see the real pieces. We like it very much when the pictures take over. When they’re bigger than the viewer. You go to a museum to look at a picture, but we like it when the picture looks at you.

We like to think that we’re forming our tomorrows, that we’re making pictures that don’t exist in reality, that maybe tomorrow will be a little bit more like our pictures than it would otherwise.