One of the greatest rebels, who I really admire: Christ. He was a rebel. He ended up being crucified. He was a great rebel. He rebelled against the established power that subjugated.
I did not want to be labelled 'the designer who survived the atomic bomb,' and therefore I have always avoided questions about Hiroshima.
You gotta understand - the state of Mississippi was in rebellion. It had rebelled against the United States. Now that has been a very difficult story for America to tell, but that's what actually happened.
As I say, you get labelled. To stop all that, I've got to win things - that's the only way you make your mark.
I rebelled by not getting straight A's and not following the path that my elder sister did. She was valedictorian and is very exemplary in her way. I look a lot like her, so I just had to do the opposite. Not that I got bad grades, but I was all about performance and just finding any way that I could to be involved in any kind of production.
There have been moments in my life when I've become numb to certain aspects of myself that I found frightening. Or I've conformed to certain morals of society and then maybe rebelled or found a way out.
I was at this fancy school, and I felt out of place, so I rebelled.
Once you get labelled, people expect you to behave within the very narrow confines of that label.
I grew up in Belle Harbor, which is in New York City, but it has the most powerful sense of nature and seasons. It wasn't even the beach and the water. I just dreamt about everything that had to do with nature. I read about Thoreau.
We've got nine generations of farmers in my family, in Warwickshire. And I do feel connected to being a farmer's son. There was a time when I didn't, when I rebelled against it, but there's certainly that sort of work ethic within me.
