David Hockney Quotes

Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.

There would be no bohemia without smoking.

I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.

Photographs aren't accounts of scrutiny. The shutter is open for a fraction of a second.

The lens is a tyranny.

Style is something you can use, and you can be like a magpie, just taking what you want. The idea of the rigid style seemed to me then something you needn't concern yourself with, it would trap you.

Shadows sometimes people don't see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny.

There's no-one up there in Northern Norway, food's terrible, but it's very, very beautiful to look at, if you've got eyes, and enjoy looking.

Faces are the most interesting things we see

You always need a bit of low-tech.You always need a pair of scissors, it seems to me. You can do better things.... The high-tech, somehow, you do have to combine it with low-tech things.

The choice is not between drugs and no drugs, but between illegal drugs and legal drugs. Until the 1920s drugs were legal, why not now? Lots of people are on drugs anyway - it is called medication.

Well, in Bradford I could say I was brought up in Bradford and Hollywood.

I actually think the deafness makes you see clearer. If you can't hear, you somehow see.

Technology brought in the mass media and technology is now taking it away.

I draw flowers every day and send them to my friends so they get fresh blooms every morning.

If you are not playful you are not alive.

I do believe that painting can change the world.

People tell me they open my e-mails first, because they aren't demands and you don't need to reply. They're simply for pleasure.

I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality can there be in that?

There's no need to believe what an artist says. Believe what he does; that's what counts.

I was always struck by how Picasso had no interest in music.

Who's going to ask a painter to see a diploma? They'd say, 'Can I see your paintings?', wouldn't they?

I'm fed up with being bossed around.

All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent.

All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized.

As for the world of fashion and celebrity, I have the usual interest in the human comedy, but the problems of depiction absorb me more.

Time is the great mystery anyway. And it's still the great mystery in the moving picture as well.

I love California; everything is so artificial.

I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is.

It's difficult to talk about colour, even remember colour actually.

Britain is a very small country with a very large press.

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I know that now.

I'm not really looking for theater work. But if somebody approaches me with enthusiasm, I might respond.

I think the Enlightenment is leading us into a dark hole, really.

Once my hand has drawn something my eye has observed, I know it by heart, and I can draw it again without a model.

I've realized that I can do performances.

The photograph isn't good enough. It's not real enough.

How can Blair fight a war on terror? Terror is not an ideology or an army; terror is a technique.

I'm very attracted to the great open spaces of the West.

You can't name the inventor of the camera. The 19th-century invention was chemical: the fixative.

Picasso is still influencing me. Of course, I haven't got that kind of energy, or skill.

I avoid the public because the English public is too aggressive these days for me.

West Yorkshire is quite dramatic and beautiful, the crags and things.

People criticized me for my photography. They said it's not art.

It's a myth that if you're liked by only four people it must be good. It might also be very bad: they might be your mother, your brother, your uncle and your aunt.

I stay up nights and fiddle with my opera designs. It's a bit obsessive. That's why I can't do it all the time.

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I don't like crowds, I live by the sea - that's what I see when I come out of my house in Bridlington.

I'm not going to stop painting just to take orders.

Tragedy is a literary concept.

You would think death was an optional extra nowadays. Nobody wants to tick that box.