Jane Hamilton

There is so much inherent drama in the matter of change. Disappointment in yourself and others, coping with the fact that life is essentially shipwreck, becoming a person you yourself could not imagine yourself to be, for good and for bad, and then ultimately there is the basic matter of loss.

What I look for when I see a piece of art for the first time is some kind of emotional, intellectual experience, that's a combination of both of those things and is informed by my knowledge and something new that I see the artist doing.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.