Amanda Harlech

“My earliest childhood memory is watching the sunlight through a jar of amber full of wasps.”

“I think the artistic process comes from disorder. When you are happy, it's not always a feeling that you can identify. It's like a dog sitting in front of a fire. Pain isolates you, but it c...”

“I do quite a lot of art, with a small 'a'. I guess that is how I was dredged up, with paints and crayons. Even when I was at nursery, I knew instinctively how to mix colours, how to make pur...”

“People think of me as a stereotype: muse, privileged, decorative. Classically, the muses were the inspiration. They'd come and go - they wouldn't actually make things, get their hands dirty....”

“As women, we need to remember: don't be a doormat!”

“I think I am really easygoing. Well... as I was about halfway through that sentence, I thought, 'No, actually you're really picky.' But the things I ask for are really simple to do.”

“I am not good wife material because I'm fiercely independent and like to go off and do my own thing.”

“I didn't want to get divorced, but at the point where your children are part of it, you have to do something. I would really love it not to have happened because it haunts you, it will never...”

“At home, I love reaching out into that absolute silence, when you can hear the owl or the wind.”