This is the study in my London flat in Soho, which is tiny - I have another equally small apartment in Laurel Canyon, California. My friends have enormous country houses and flashy city lofts, but I always seem to end up in tiny, cell-like, monastic spaces.

I cherish my solitude, I don't have email, and I've only had a cell phone for a few years. The view out of the window is bleak and reminds me of Seventies Poland, so I keep the blinds shut. I can disappear completely.

I write and draw and think in this room, and it's been through a million changes since I moved in 20 years ago. For example, this is the most cluttered it's ever been and the walls used to be black, with big paintings on them. Now all of my artwork is in storage. My friends used to hate visiting because there was not a single piece of comfortable furniture, but I have the big padded chair now and I guess that's sort of comfortable. A few years ago I got rid of my TV that was one of the most liberating decisions I've ever made. I read voraciously, and at the time I just had a cacophony of culture in my head. I was watching someone lying in bed on Big Brother and I thought: Enough is enough.

I got this flat when I was doing a lot of painting and making experimental art films. Id been very snooty about pop videos and then I saw how much money you could make from doing them so I changed my mind. It was here that I wrote the screenplay to Love Is the Devil (about Francis Bacon) and also storyboarded my current film, The Edge of Love, about Dylan and Caitlin Thomas. At the moment I'm working with a writer on my next film, Wuthering Heights.

The luxury of what I do is that there are intense bursts of activity and then periods of relative inactivity. I hate the publicity rounds and the pain of the reviews, which is another reason to retreat back here.