David Hockney Quotes

The way we see things is constantly changing. At the moment the way we see things has been left a lot to the camera. That shouldn't necessarily be.

We only see what we want to see; we only hear what we want to hear. Our belief system is just like a mirror that only shows us what we believe.

A camera teaches you how to see without a camera.

The thing is that pictures are everywhere. The question is what we don't see, and why don't we see so much. I just see it.

Replacing human vision is more than just a tool: we need to understand how that affects the brain.

Animal vision - including human vision - is so biased toward movement that we don't technically see stationary objects at all.

About shadows: do we see shadows? Loads of people don't. A camera will notice a shadow, but how many people have got a shadow in front of them when they take a picture and don't notice it, and then they see it in the photograph because the photograph will catch the shadow.

Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.

I don't take the camera out with me. My eyes are the camera for me every day.

The 'how' has a great effect on what we see. To say that 'what we see' is more important than 'how we see it' is to think that 'how' has been settled and fixed. When you realize this is not the case, you realize that 'how' often affects 'what' we see.

The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.

A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.

Photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you'd never paid attention to.

With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.

The eye always fills in the imperfections.

The eye and brain are conspirators, and, like most conspiracies, theirs is negotiated behind closed doors, in the back room, outside of our awareness.

Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.

Art isn't about drawing; it's about learning to see. What organization doesn't need this ability?

Seeing consists of the grasping of structural features rather than the indiscriminate recording of detail.

I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, 'Look.' I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, 'Look again,' which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can't explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you've had that experience, you see differently.

The eyes see not what is before them when the mind is intent on other matters.

Speaking, when you have something to say, is like looking. But who looks? If people could see properly, and see whole, they would all be painters. And it's because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand.

That's always disappointed me, to see a guy in the crowd who doesn't look like he's having fun but in general if you just listen to the crowd it sounds like they're having fun. So I don't want to focus on the one guy who's not having fun. And by closing my eyes and just listening, I can't hear that he's not laughing but I can see that he's not laughing.

I think seeing happens partly through the eyes, but not entirely.

The most difficult thing is what is thought to be the simplest; to really see the things which are before your eyes.