I do do a lot of talking, because it saves me listening.
— David Hockney
I've always wanted to be able to paint the dawn.
I draw flowers every day and send them to my friends so they get fresh blooms every morning.
Tragedy is a literary concept.
I'm not going to stop painting just to take orders.
I value my friends.
I think my father would have liked to have been an artist, actually. But I think he didn't quite have perhaps the drive or, I don't know, I mean he had a family to bring up I suppose.
All film directors, even the ones using 3-D today, want you to look at what they chose.
I've always felt very English.
I'm a natural sceptic.
Picasso is still influencing me. Of course, I haven't got that kind of energy, or skill.
In fact, most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves.
Smoking calms me down. It's enjoyable. I don't want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life.
There are enough no smoking places now.
But, I would always be thinking of how pictures are constructed and colour, how to use it, I mean you're using it for constructing, makes you think about it, the place did as well.
But slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. It took me a long time, I mean I actually played with cameras and photography for about 20 years.
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.
East Yorkshire, to the uninitiated, just looks like a lot of little hills. But it does have these marvelous valleys that were caused by glaciers, not rivers. So it is unusual.
I've realized that I can do performances.
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.
People criticized me for my photography. They said it's not art.
I'm not really looking for theater work. But if somebody approaches me with enthusiasm, I might respond.
I don't value prizes of any sort.
I went to art school actually when I was sixteen years old.
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.
I was 18 when I first visited London, I'm very provincial like that, but I must confess the moment I got to America I thought: This is the place. It was more open, with 24-hour cities and pubs and restaurants that didn't close.
Cubism was an attack on the perspective that had been known and used for 500 years. It was the first big, big change. It confused people: they said, 'Things don't look like that!'
When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting the previous work. That's the mistake; it's not rejecting it, it's saying, 'I have exploited it enough now and I wish to take a look at another corner.'
I haven't stopped painting or drawing - I've just added another medium.
It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.
You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended, meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals, we were in a new era.
I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.
I'm a bit claustrophobic, I know that now.
Well, in Bradford I could say I was brought up in Bradford and Hollywood.
West Yorkshire is quite dramatic and beautiful, the crags and things.
Who would have thought that the telephone would bring back drawing?
Spring is very energising to me.
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.
What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.
I mean if you draw you like drawing, it's er, an activity you do all the time actually.
Laugh a lot. It clears the lungs.
I think I am seeing more clearly now than ever.
Who's going to ask a painter to see a diploma? They'd say, 'Can I see your paintings?', wouldn't they?
I think cubism has not fully been developed. It is treated like a style, pigeonholed and that's it.
To me, the world's rather beautiful if you look at it. Especially nature.
We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.
Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at it.
Most artists work all the time, they do actually, especially good artists, they work all the time, what else is there to do? I mean you do.
But the moment you use an ordinary camera, you are not seeing the picture, remember, meaning, you had to remember what you've taken. Now you could see it of course, with a digital thing, but remember in 1982 you couldn't.
What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space.
