Quotes from David Hockney

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

I am constantly preoccupied with how to remove distance so that we can all come closer together, so that we can all begin to sense we are the same, we are one.

And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.

People tell me they open my e-mails first, because they aren't demands and you don't need to reply. They're simply for pleasure.

It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.

Faces are the most interesting things we see

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

Photographs aren't accounts of scrutiny. The shutter is open for a fraction of a second.

Anything simple always interests me.

Great claims are being made for the photograph as truth. We are showing you things, we show you the war. I say you can't actually. The camera can't.

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

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

I see the iPad as a wonderful new drawing medium, but I am at a loss as to how to make it pay.

I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.

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

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.

I think cubism has not fully been developed. It is treated like a style, pigeonholed and that's it.

Like people, trees are all individuals.

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

Smoking calms me down. It's enjoyable. I don't want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life.

There are enough no smoking places now.

I love California; everything is so artificial.

Style is something you can use, and you can be like a magpie, just taking what you want. The idea of the rigid style seemed to me then something you needn't concern yourself with, it would trap you.

You would think death was an optional extra nowadays. Nobody wants to tick that box.