Quotes from David Hockney

Artists, real artists, have to work. They can't be hedonists. Really good painters are always working. The world is such a marvelous place. You have to look and to work. That's exactly why Van Gogh was such a great artist: total commitment. That's what you need.

I believe that the very process of looking can make a thing beautiful.

Most art will disappear. The past is edited so it always looks clearer to us. Today always looks a bit of a jumble. We'll put up with rubbish from now, but not with rubbish from the past.

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.

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

It's a myth that if you're liked by only four people it must be good. It might also be very bad: they might be your mother, your brother, your uncle and your aunt.

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

I worked in the NHS as a hospital orderly during my national service, and people thought it was a noble service. But over the years it's lost its humanity.

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I know that now.

I think I am seeing more clearly now than ever.

Laugh a lot. It clears the lungs.

Television is becoming a collage - there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I don't like crowds, I live by the sea - that's what I see when I come out of my house in Bridlington.

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.

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

I prefer living in color.

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

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

On the iPhone I tended to draw with my thumb. Whereas the moment I got to the iPad, I found myself using every finger.

I live wherever I happen to be.

I don't value prizes of any sort.

Who would have thought that the telephone would bring back drawing?

OH, I LIKE smoking, I do. I smoke for my health, my mental health. Tobacco gives you little pauses, a rest from life. I don't suppose anyone smoking a pipe would have road rage, would they?