In a way, a man's body is more beautiful than a woman's.

John Parsons, the gay art director at 'Vogue,' really started my career.

I won't do advertising if they bring a layout and say, 'This is what we want to do,' because anybody can do that; it's not interesting. They've got digital and the computer; it's not taking pictures, it's not magic - it's a picture done by committee.

I always go for simplicity.

I've been used by women all my life, fortunately.

I have always wanted to live in the present and never the past.

Rockers are the nicest people to photograph. They have no inhibitions.

Kate Moss is the best thing since Jean Shrimpton, really.

It's only a few nutcases who do art for themselves, like Van Gogh.

I always look at people and think how I would cast them.

The first half of the 20th century belongs to Picasso, and the second half is about photography. They said digital would kill photography because everyone can do it, but they said that about the box brownie in 1885 when it came out. It makes photography interesting because everyone thinks they can take a picture.

I don't feel very optimistic in London.

The only thing they can't teach you at art school is art.

I don't like any sport except boxing and bull fighting.

It's not about composition. It's the way you feel about how your objects should relate to each other. I've got lots of African statues and things, and the cleaner arranges them like soldiers, which drives me mad. So I have to rearrange them, and I must drive her mad, because I'm doing anarchy and she's doing military manoeuvres.

Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that.

I don't really like the term 'artist.' I'm not sure what it means. It's a bit like 'love.'

I've had some weird experiences.

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 was dyslexic, so I was put in the silly class at school.

I'm not really one for regrets.

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

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

It always amazes me when people ask you to do something and then tell you how to do it.

The trouble with people like Tony Blair is they get confused, they think intelligence is education when they're two different things.

I just thought it was magic that you could stick a bit of paper in some coffee-type liquid and a picture comes out.

I didn't know I was going to live for 50 years. It has come as a shock.

In France they don't think I'm difficult.

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

If I have any sexist feelings they are aimed at men: I hate manly men.

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

It is a sign of a dull nature to occupy oneself deeply in matters that concern the body; for instance, to be over much occupied about exercise, about eating and drinking, about easing oneself, about sexual intercourse.

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.

People want security in this insecure world.

I hate being so nostalgic about the Sixties.

I never set out to be a photographer.

I could develop a picture by the time I was 12.

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

You can't really copy what I do because I don't do anything.

My exploits are nothing now to the average person.

The reason I did fashion was it was the only way to get paid to do anything creative. You couldn't support yourself as an 'artist' - I hate that word. The only way you could be 'arty' was as a fashion photographer, because it still had a certain amount of integrity involved.

I've never been anti-women.

Everyone gets old - there's nothing you can do about it.

All I could do at school was paint and draw and that was the only time I ever passed any exam. It was the only thing I ever got right at school.

I left school on my 15th birthday.

I sort of fall in love with them when I'm photographing them - men and women.

I guess I'm the last of the Cockneys.

In New York, everyone's desperate for success, desperate for money and desperate to be accepted, but in London they're more laid back about things like that.

London changes because of money. It's real estate. If they can build some offices or expensive apartments they will, it's money that changes everything in a city.

My friends are all megalomaniacs - from Damien Hirst to Jack Nicholson - all of them.