Quotes from David Bailey

My father was a tailor, my mother a machinist.

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.

I won't do advertising if they bring a layout and say, 'This is what we want to do,' because anybody can do that; it's not interesting. They've got digital and the computer; it's not taking pictures, it's not magic - it's a picture done by committee.

I could develop a picture by the time I was 12.

I was a terrible father. The most I ever did for my children was to teach them chess. At least they got that.

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

I love people for giving me their time. It's a privilege - I make the most of it.

I've had some weird experiences.

My exploits are nothing now to the average person.

If I have any sexist feelings they are aimed at men: I hate manly men.

I don't like any sport except boxing and bull fighting.

Good shoes are important. I wear English brogues in a wide fitting. They last me years.

I was ten when I got my first serious beating. It was rough.

I've always been a bit flip.

Fortunately I didn't get educated because if I'd got educated I'd be an educated fool now.

In France they don't think I'm difficult.

The only thing they can't teach you at art school is art.

I never cared for fashion much, amusing little seams and witty little pleats: it was the girls I liked.

All my ex-girlfriends or wives are all kind of great friends and I've never understood somebody who can live with somebody for five or six years and then not like them.

The first half of the 20th century belongs to Picasso, and the second half is about photography. They said digital would kill photography because everyone can do it, but they said that about the box brownie in 1885 when it came out. It makes photography interesting because everyone thinks they can take a picture.

The reason I did fashion was it was the only way to get paid to do anything creative. You couldn't support yourself as an 'artist' - I hate that word. The only way you could be 'arty' was as a fashion photographer, because it still had a certain amount of integrity involved.

Being dyslexic, I was told that I was an idiot all the time.

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.

Being handsome wasn't much of a burden. It worked for me.