David Hockney

"What I always longed to do was to be able to paint like I can draw, most artists would tell you that, they would all like to paint like they can draw."

"Hockney leads smoking ban protest BBC article."

"New Yorker review of Hockney's Secret Knowledge"

"I've started painting much more freely, and faster. I think it's working in the theatre that did it. You know what the Glyndebourne scene-painters said about my The Magic Flute? They said they had to …"

"When conventions are old, there's quite a good reason, it's not arbitrary. So Picasso discovered that, as it were, and I'm sure that for him that was probably almost as exciting as discovering Cubism,…"

"Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that."

"In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can."

"In one gallery they actually had a notice which said "No Sketching." How obnoxious! I said, "How do you think these things got on the walls if there was no sketching?"