David Hockney Quotes - Page 7

I'm not really looking for theater work. But if somebody approaches me with enthusiasm, I might respond.

Tragedy is a literary concept.

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

I avoid the public because the English public is too aggressive these days for me.

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!'

The vanishing point leads to the missiles of today, which can take us out of this world. It could be that the west's greatest mistakes were the 'invention' of the external vanishing point and the internal combustion engine.

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?

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.

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

All film directors, even the ones using 3-D today, want you to look at what they chose.

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.

I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.

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 moment I got a very big studio, everything took off.

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?

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

Tobacco is America's greatest gift to the world!

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

I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.

I don't value prizes of any sort.

Style is something you can use, and you can be like a magpie, just taking what you want.

People criticized me for my photography. They said it's not art.

I'm not going to stop painting just to take orders.

Yes, I did, I mean I painted er, in a kind of abstract expressionist way, because of course that was exciting.

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