David Hockney

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I'm a very early riser, and I don't like to miss that beautiful early morning light.

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 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 did come from a pretty independent-minded family.

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

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!'

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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