David Hockney Quotes

Drawing takes time. A line has time in it

If you are not playful you are not alive.

Smoking calms me down. It's enjoyable. I don't want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life.

The problem is, photographic dyes and printing inks aren't as good as paint, actually.

I feel 30. [Publo] Picasso said he always felt 30. Well, I do.

Great claims are being made for the photograph as truth. We are showing you things, we show you the war. I say you can't actually. The camera can't.

I'm really only interested in technology that is about pictures. I'm interested in anything that makes a picture.

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 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.

Everything does come from nature. That's where you get new ideas. Just draw the landscape. I felt doing it with a bit of burnt wood was also good because I was drawing burnt wood with a piece of wood. I wanted to do black and white. After using color, I thought black and white would be good. You can have color in black and white. There is color in them, actually.

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.

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

Photography hankers after the condition of the neutral observer. But there can be no such things as a neutral observer. For something to be seen, it must be looked at by somebody, and any true and real depiction must be an account of the experience of that looking.

The camera can't see space. It sees surfaces. People see space, which is much more interesting.

I think photography has made us see the landscape in a very dull way - that's one of its effects. It's not spatial.

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.

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.

I did come from a pretty independent-minded family.

I think cubism has not fully been developed. It is treated like a style, pigeonholed and that's it.

Photoshop came out of painting, and now it's going back to painting.

There are enough no smoking places now.

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've always been interested in space in pictures. I think my going deaf increased my spatial sense, because I can't get the direction of sound. I feel that I see space very clearly, and that's because I can't hear it. So it's a compensatory thing.

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

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

Enjoyment of the landscape is a thrill.

I do do a lot of talking, because it saves me listening.

California is always in my mind.

The cameras are getting smaller, they're getting more versatile, and eventually, I'm sure you'll have a camera with lots and lots of things on it so you can alter the picture. You could alter perspective.

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

Photography sees surfaces, it doesn't see space. We see space but the camera doesn't.

I'm sure that the camera is part of European art.

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.

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

The picture itself is a document. How do you mean? We're looking at a document. It gives you clues.

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

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.

We don't all see the same way at all. Even if I'm sitting looking at you, there is always the memory of you as well. And a memory is now. So someone who's never met you before is seeing a different person. That's bound to be the case. We all see something different. I assume most people don't look very hard at anything.

I'm rather shocked by what I thought was simple mindedness actually. I thought they're not looking, they're not actually looking.

I was always interested in photography because it makes a picture.

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.

We all know a mirror reflects us, if you look in it. If you move, the reflection moves. If you project from a mirror, meaning it will project an image, it's nothing to do with you. The world seen by nobody.

I think we seem to remember things in still pictures. I never gave up on painting. When they said painting was dead, I just thought, Well, that's all about photography, and photography's not that interesting, and it's changing anyway.

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

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.

In one gallery they actually had a notice which said No Sketching. How obnoxious! I said, How do you think these things got on the walls if there was no sketching?

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