Quotes By David Hockney

What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space.

But, 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.

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?

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

The moment rules over everything.

I think the Enlightenment is leading us into a dark hole, really.

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

We grow small trying to be great.

I live wherever I happen to be.

I actually think the deafness makes you see clearer. If you can't hear, you somehow see.

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.

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.

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

Spring is very energising to me.

East Yorkshire, to the uninitiated, just looks like a lot of little hills. But it does have these marvelous valleys that were caused by glaciers, not rivers. So it is unusual.

As you get older, it gets a bit harder to keep the spontaneity in you, but I work at it.

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

I mean if you draw you like drawing, it's er, an activity you do all the time actually.

Anything simple always interests me.

Britain is a very small country with a very large press.

My only worry is the painting I'm doing. Nothing else.

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

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.

I did come from a pretty independent-minded family.

When you are older, you realise that everything else is just nothing compared to painting and drawing.

I'm very attracted to the great open spaces of the West.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

I prefer living in color.

Tragedy is a literary concept.

California is always in my mind.