Howard Hodgkin Quotes

Once a book falls into our possession, it is ours, the same way children lay their claim: 'That's my book.' As if it were organically part of them. That must be why we have so much trouble returning borrowed books. It's not exactly theft (of course not, we're not thieves, what are you implying?); it's simply a slippage in ownership or, better still, a transfer of substance. That which belonged to someone else becomes mine when I look at it. And if I like what I read, naturally I'll have difficulty giving it back.

When you love something, you get to know it. Then you feel the ownership and if it changes, you only love it as far as you know it because then you're like, "What is this?"

Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.

Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.

a book always keeps something of its owner between its pages.

Listen to me. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what any of this means. But I know this much. It doesn’t matter. You’re not one of them. You never were. You’re not theirs. You’re mine.

If we'd put them in a vase in the living room, they would have been everyone's flowers. I wanted them to be my flowers.

In theory momentos serve to bring back the moment. In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here. How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else I could never afford to see.

Home is where we have a history.

It's just that... without the memories it's all meaningless.

Possessions are usually diminished by possession.

Is it reasonable to take it ill, that anybody desires of us that which is their own? All we have is the Almighty's; and shall not God have his own when he calls for it?

Love and used Subarus were two different things. Weren't they?

The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me. In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions... I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen again.

If men are to respect each other for what they are, they must cease to respect each other for what they own.

Everything we own tells too much about us.

The spot of ground on which a man has stood is forever interesting to him.

I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together.

No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there - well or poorly.

No one owns anything. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them. And if nothing belongs to me, then there's no point wasting my time looking after things that aren't mine.

Here is the most telling fact: you wish to possess me.
 Here is another fact: I loved you and let you think you could.

All things that a man owns hold him far more than he holds them.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who know where their high school yearbook is and those who do not.

My home is such a powerfully imaginative place that the space is almost irrelevant. I think the house I live at on the Hudson is where I belong because it's the only place where I am that I never think about when I'm leaving.

Perhaps when we're forced to forfeit what we own, we lose any sentimental associations. Perhaps pawning our valuables frees us in the same way a house fire destroys not only our worldly goods, but our attachment to what's gone.