I prefer living in color.

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.

Enjoyment of the landscape is a thrill.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

I actually think the deafness makes you see clearer. If you can't hear, you somehow see.

Anything simple always interests me.

I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can't be done in one picture.

Smoking calms me down. It's enjoyable. I don't want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life.

There are enough no smoking places now.

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

I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.

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

I'm a very early riser, and I don't like to miss that beautiful early morning light.

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.

Shadows sometimes people don't see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny.

Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it.

Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at it.

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

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

It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.

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

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

Laugh a lot. It clears the lungs.

I draw flowers every day and send them to my friends so they get fresh blooms every morning.

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

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

Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft.

I'm always excited by the unlikely, never by ordinary things.

I paint what I like, when I like and where I like.

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.'

You must plan to be spontaneous.

It's very British to go about to see something unusual and paint it.

And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.

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

All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent.

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

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

Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.

As you get older, it gets a bit harder to keep the spontaneity in you, but I work at it.

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.

The moment rules over everything.

Most artists work all the time, they do actually, especially good artists, they work all the time, what else is there to do? I mean you do.

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!'

I'm not antisocial. I like people.

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

I mean if you draw you like drawing, it's er, an activity you do all the time actually.

What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space.

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.