David Hockney

“Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.”

“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...”

“I'm not antisocial. I like people.”

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

“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 o...”

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

“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?”

“I grew up in austerity in the 1940s and 1950s.”

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

“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!'”

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

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

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

“All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent.”

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

“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...”

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

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

“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.”