“I first started smoking when I was nine. And I first started trying to make something out of cigarettes because I like to use relevant kind of materials. I’ve got these cigarettes around so why not use them. There is this obsessive activity of me sticking all these cigarettes on the sculptures, and obsessive activity could be viewed as a form of masturbation. It is a form of sex, it does come from the same sort of drive, And there’s so much satisfaction in it. When you make something completely covered in cigarettes and see it as solid it looks incredibly busy and it’s a bit like sperm or genes under the microscope.”
(Sarah Lucas, January 2000, interview with James Putnam)