David Hockney

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

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.

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.

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

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

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I don't like crowds, I live by the sea - that's what I see when I come out of my house in Bridlington.

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

I'm a natural sceptic.

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 generally only paint people I know, I'm not a flatterer really.

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

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

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.

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.

To me, the world's rather beautiful if you look at it. Especially nature.

I went to art school actually when I was sixteen years old.

Tragedy is a literary concept.

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

Tobacco is America's greatest gift to the world!

I worked in the NHS as a hospital orderly during my national service, and people thought it was a noble service. But over the years it's lost its humanity.