David Bailey

All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings you don't think of in a special time or with a specific event. With photos I always think I'm looking at something dead.

The skull is nature's sculpture.

It is a sign of a dull nature to occupy oneself deeply in matters that concern the body for instance, to be over much occupied about exercise, about eating and drinking, about easing oneself, about sexual intercourse.

I'm not mad about movies, there are too many people involved in the making of them, and they lack a definitive creative focus.

London changes because of money. It's real estate. If they can build some offices or expensive apartments they will, it's money that changes everything in a city.

In New York, everyone's desperate for success, desperate for money and desperate to be accepted, but in London they're more laid back about things like that.

Photography is more about money now but then so are most things.

To get rich, you have to be making money while you're asleep.

I was surrounded by strong women so it had never even occurred to me that women were anything other than equal to men.

I love learning new techniques.

When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous.

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

The trouble with people like Tony Blair is they get confused, they think intelligence is education when they're two different things.

I like change. There's something Buddhist about it - continuous change is wonderful.

I left school on my 15th birthday.

The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading.

A positive attitude can really make dreams come true - it did for me.

Fashion often starts off beautiful and becomes ugly, whereas art starts off ugly sometimes and becomes beautiful.

If you're curious, London's an amazing place.

I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.