David Hockney

“West Yorkshire is quite dramatic and beautiful, the crags and things.”

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

“Spring is very energising to me.”

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

“I paint what I like, when I like and where I like.”

“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?”

“Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at it.”

“I've always felt very English.”

“It's very British to go about to see something unusual and paint it.”

“Who's going to ask a painter to see a diploma? They'd say, 'Can I see your paintings?', wouldn't they?”

“I 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.”

“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.”

“Picasso is still influencing me. Of course, I haven't got that kind of energy, or skill.”

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

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

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

“But the moment you use an ordinary camera, you are not seeing the picture, remember, meaning, you had to remember what you've taken. Now you could see it of course, with a digital thing, but remember in 1982 you couldn't.”

“The photograph isn't good enough. It's not real enough.”

“But slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. It took me a long time, I mean I actually played with cameras and photography for about 20 years.”

“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!'”