Quotes from David Hockney

I'm fed up with being bossed around.

Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it.

You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended, meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals, we were in a new era.

When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting the previous work. That's the mistake; it's not rejecting it, it's saying, 'I have exploited it enough now and I wish to take a look at another corner.'

It's no good saying I wished I could go out more, because I can't. But I don't bother about it too much.

Technology brought in the mass media and technology is now taking it away.

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time.

Drawing takes time. A line has time in it

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.

I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is.

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

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

I grew up in austerity in the 1940s and 1950s.

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.

Enjoyment of the landscape is a thrill.

I've realized that I can do performances.

Tobacco is America's greatest gift to the world!

Time is the great mystery anyway. And it's still the great mystery in the moving picture as well.

I stay up nights and fiddle with my opera designs. It's a bit obsessive. That's why I can't do it all the time.

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

The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it.

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

Well, in Bradford I could say I was brought up in Bradford and Hollywood.

Of course you can still paint landscape - it's not been worn out.