In fact, I'm a bit of a slob, but I've always said my excuse, I have a higher sense of order, I can see it where others can't. That's my excuse for slobbery, I must admit, but I think it's a good one.
David HockneyI think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.
David HockneyWho's going to ask a painter to see a diploma? They'd say, 'Can I see your paintings?', wouldn't they?
David HockneyBecause I'm interested in depiction, representation, therefore you're interested in photography. You don't ignore it.
David HockneyMovie actors disappear - any young person wouldn't know Cary Grant. They're going to disappear. Fifty years ago, you thought film was here to stay. But nothing is here to stay, actually - except perhaps paintings and drawings.
David HockneyIf you see the world as beautiful, thrilling and mysterious, as I think I do, then you feel quite alive.
David HockneyDrawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.
David HockneyWhat 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.
David HockneyPeople from the village come up and tease me: 'We hear you've started drawing on your telephone.' And I tell them, 'Well, no, actually, it's just that occasionally I speak on my sketch pad,'
David HockneyBut, 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.
David HockneyAll film directors, even the ones using 3-D today, want you to look at what they chose.
David HockneyI've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary.
David HockneyIt's all right if you don't mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed Cyclops—for a split second.
David HockneyTime is the great mystery anyway. And it's still the great mystery in the moving picture as well.
David HockneyShadows 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.
David HockneyI see the iPad as a wonderful new drawing medium, but I am at a loss as to how to make it pay.
David HockneyYou 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.
David HockneyI never work with music. I hate background music, always did. I only like music in the foreground, meaning, deliberately listen to it, actually.
David HockneyAbout shadows: do we see shadows? Loads of people don't. A camera will notice a shadow, but how many people have got a shadow in front of them when they take a picture and don't notice it, and then they see it in the photograph because the photograph will catch the shadow.
David HockneyOn the 31st of October 2011 year, I had a mini-stroke. I couldn't finish my sentences. So I went to the doctor. It was a tiny one. The speech came back in a month or so. I did notice I could draw even better, I felt. I was concentrating more. And I wasn't talking much, but I was drawing. I said, "Well, I don't have to talk much."
David HockneyI actually think the deafness makes you see clearer. If you can't hear, you somehow see.
David HockneyI have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure...ther e is always, everywhere, an enormous amount of suffering. But I believe my duty as an artist is to overcome and alleviate the sterility of despair...New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling... I do believe that painting can change the world.
David HockneyWater in swimming pools changes its look more than in any other form its colour can be man-made and its dancing rhythms reflect not only the sky but, because of its transparency, the depth of the water as well. If the water surface is almost still and there is a strong sun, then dancing lines with the colours of the spectrum appear everywhere.
David HockneyI was never that interested in movies. I was interested in them as a thing, but I didn't want to make movies. I always wanted to draw and paint.
David HockneyOH, I LIKE smoking, I do. I smoke for my health, my mental health. Tobacco gives you little pauses, a rest from life. I don't suppose anyone smoking a pipe would have road rage, would they?
David HockneyIt sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.
David HockneyI think the ambiguity of similarity and difference is very powerful. It's the same scene in different times of year read across the grid, and, of course, different locations reading vertically. But you can get confused and lost in the series. You force the mind, which is always comparing and contrasting, to stumble ... That ambiguity is very powerful. One is getting lost and refinding oneself.
David HockneyI 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.
David Hockney