David Bailey

All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings you don't think of in a special time or with a specific event. With photos I always think I'm looking at something dead.

I left school on my 15th birthday.

Fortunately I didn't get educated because if I'd got educated I'd be an educated fool now.

I didn't try and do fashion pictures. I tried to do portraits of girls wearing dresses.

I was a terrible father. The most I ever did for my children was to teach them chess. At least they got that.

I've had some weird experiences.

Nothing wrong with retouching - nothing new about retouching.

I've always been a bit flip.

I have never met an ugly woman.

I had a terrible time with feminists in the Seventies. They hated me, those women. I think they hated everything.

I like change. There's something Buddhist about it - continuous change is wonderful.

I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.

I did painting before I did photography.

Anybody can be a great photographer if they zoom in enough on what they love.

The only thing approaching art in a movie is the script.

Fashion often starts off beautiful and becomes ugly, whereas art starts off ugly sometimes and becomes beautiful.

I suppose because my work was so popular people didn't really look at it.

I am mad about my wife.

You have to kind of be invisible when you photograph children, so you use a longer lens.

I'm not political and I don't judge.