David Hockney

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.'

I'm interested in all kinds of pictures, however they are made, with cameras, with paint brushes, with computers, with anything.

I've always wanted to be able to paint the dawn.

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

In fact, most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves.

I can get excitement watching rain on a puddle. And then I paint it. Now, I admit, there are not too many people who would find that exciting. But I would. And I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is.

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!'

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

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

I haven't stopped painting or drawing - I've just added another medium.

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.

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure...ther e is always, everywhere, an enormous amount of suffering. But I believe my duty as an artist is to overcome and alleviate the sterility of despair...New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling... I do believe that painting can change the world.

All art is contemporary, if it's alive, and if it's not alive, what's the point of it?

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.

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.

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

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

Drawing takes time. A line has time in it

I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality can there be in that?

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.

The moment you can learn to deal with homosexuality in art, it's quite an exciting moment, just as in a sense when people 'come out' it's quite an exciting moment. It means they become aware of their desires, and can deal with them in a remarkably honest way.