Casey Wilson

My mom's brother was gay, and he actually passed away from AIDS when I was 13. He was quite a character, but he also worked at the electrical plant, so he was this complicated guy with a big laugh who would wear a trucker hat and do impressions. He was gay, but to me, Uncle Alan was just the funniest person in the world.

My dad always said that 90 percent of marital problems could be solved by getting your blood sugar up, and he's right! So I would say pick a partner who's forgiving when you have low blood sugar and threaten to drive your car through your shared home.

The thing about dancing - what it taught me all those years - is it gives you an amazing sense of discipline in forcing yourself to do things that you know are good for you but you don't really want to do.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.

Early in the 1990s, I flew alone in a dandelion-yellow, single-engine, 180-horsepower Piper Cherokee from Westchester County Airport in New York westward to the Rocky Mountains, landing and refuelling a good many times in middle-sized cities and towns along the way.