David Hockney's Quotes

I value my friends.

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

I went to art school actually when I was sixteen years old.

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 a bit claustrophobic, I know that now.

I'm a bit of a propagandist.

I'm a natural sceptic.

I'm always excited by the unlikely, never by ordinary things.

I'm interested in all kinds of pictures, however they are made, with cameras, with paint brushes, with computers, with anything.

I'm not antisocial. I like people.

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

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

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

I've always felt very English.

I've always wanted to be able to paint the dawn.

I've realized that I can do performances.

In fact, most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves.

In my old age, I'll be in L.A.

It's no good saying I wished I could go out more, because I can't. But I don't bother about it too much.

It's time to debate images, especially when someone's going to prison for downloading them.

It's very British to go about to see something unusual and paint it.

Laugh a lot. It clears the lungs.

Like people, trees are all individuals.

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.

My only worry is the painting I'm doing. Nothing else.

Of course you can still paint landscape - it's not been worn out.

On the iPhone I tended to draw with my thumb. Whereas the moment I got to the iPad, I found myself using every finger.

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

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.

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

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

Spring is very energising to me.

The moment I got a very big studio, everything took off.

The moment rules over everything.

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

To me, the world's rather beautiful if you look at it. Especially nature.

Tobacco is America's greatest gift to the world!

Tragedy is a literary concept.

Ultimately, I'm about liberty and I think you have to defend it.

Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft.

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.

What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space.

Who would have thought that the telephone would bring back drawing?

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

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

And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.

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.

I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can't be done in one picture.

I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.

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.

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.'

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?

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.

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.

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!'

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 can often tell when drawings are done from photographs, because you can tell what they miss out, what the camera misses out: usually weight and volume - there's a flatness to them.

I go and see anything that's visually new, any technology that's about picture-making. The technology won't make the pictures different, but someone using it will.

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 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.

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.

I worked in the NHS as a hospital orderly during my national service, and people thought it was a noble service. But over the years it's lost its humanity.

Television is becoming a collage - there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.

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.

Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it.

Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at it.

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Anything simple always interests me.

It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.

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.

When you are older, you realise that everything else is just nothing compared to painting and drawing.

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.

Being able to draw means being able to put things in believable space. People who don't draw very well can't do that.

Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.