Top 112 Quotes & Sayings by David Bailey - Page 2

I'm an image-maker.

The Sixties was a time of breaking down class barriers, although I think class still exists today in some areas.

Photography is more about money now but then so are most things.

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.

Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they're in.

I love people for giving me their time. It's a privilege - I make the most of it.

I don't see the point of photographing trees or rocks because they're there and anyone can photograph them if they're prepared to hang around and wait for the light.

I know everything should be photographed. It helps me make sense of my existence.

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

I am not responsible for all the journalists in the past that have told lies.

I did painting before I did photography.

I'm not mad about movies, there are too many people involved in the making of them, and they lack a definitive creative focus.

I don't feel very optimistic in London.

There's nothing wrong with being a fashion photographer, but it's a bit limited.

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

The earth has a life of its own.

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

When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous.

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.

All my ex-girlfriends or wives are all kind of great friends and I've never understood somebody who can live with somebody for five or six years and then not like them.

I'm never shocked, I'm not the shockable type!

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

I've had some weird experiences.

I don't think it matters where I came from any more.

Botticelli would have made a very good fashion photographer. He did eight heads instead of seven heads in a body, which is fashion illustration.

I'm not really one for regrets.

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

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

I used to love the '20s.

I don't think my work does reflect my nationality - I don't like the idea of nationalism.

In '73 I photographed the cannibals in New Guinea. They treated me OK but they didn't make you feel relaxed... I managed to escape unscathed though, I'm pretty good at that.

I've always been a bit flip.

Good shoes are important. I wear English brogues in a wide fitting. They last me years.

I think about death all the time. I know there's nothing out there, but I'm curious. There's a 300 billion-to-one chance that there might be an energy that goes somewhere else, but I doubt it.

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

I am mad about my wife.

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.

If something becomes old-fashioned, it was no good to start with. Think about it. Michelangelo is not old-fashioned.

Instead of putting someone in prison for being a hooligan, give him a choice. He may have beaten someone up and he's got eight years, but tell him you can do eight years inside or spend five years in the Army. Put him in the Parachute Regiment, they'd soon sort him out.

Journalists never make it clear when you are joking.

Fashion often starts off beautiful and becomes ugly, whereas art starts off ugly sometimes and becomes beautiful.

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

Girls are more attractive to me than dresses.

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

You have to kind of be invisible when you photograph children, so you use a longer lens.

I love learning new techniques.

My paintings are rubbish.

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

I suppose because my work was so popular people didn't really look at it.

I don't do proud.

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 was surrounded by strong women so it had never even occurred to me that women were anything other than equal to men.