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.

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

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.

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

Anything simple always interests me.

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

Television is becoming a collage - there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.

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

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.

We grow small trying to be great.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I know that now.

But, I would always be thinking of how pictures are constructed and colour, how to use it, I mean you're using it for constructing, makes you think about it, the place did as well.

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

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.

Yes, I did, I mean I painted er, in a kind of abstract expressionist way, because of course that was exciting.

I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.

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

There are enough no smoking places now.

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.

You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended, meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals, we were in a new era.

A lot of people, given the chance, would blow up everything, and you and me.

All film directors, even the ones using 3-D today, want you to look at what they chose.

All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent.

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?

As for the world of fashion and celebrity, I have the usual interest in the human comedy, but the problems of depiction absorb me more.

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

Being able to draw means being able to put things in believable space. People who don't draw very well can't do that.

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

California is always in my mind.

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!'

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

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

Easel painting means small painting.

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.

Enjoyment of the landscape is a thrill.

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

I avoid the public because the English public is too aggressive these days for me.

I can often tell when drawings are done from photographs, because you can tell what they miss out, what the camera misses out: usually weight and volume - there's a flatness to them.

I do do a lot of talking, because it saves me listening.

I don't value prizes of any sort.

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

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