David Bailey Quotes

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.

I've had some weird experiences.

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

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.

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

My father was a tailor, my mother a machinist.

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

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

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

My paintings are rubbish.

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

I've never been anti-women.

I had a terrible time with feminists in the Seventies. They hated me, those women. I think they hated everything.

A positive attitude can really make dreams come true - it did for me.

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

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

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 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 love learning new techniques.

I have never met an ugly woman.

I'm not really one for regrets.

I hate being so nostalgic about the Sixties.

The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading.

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

You adapt to who you're photographing.

I don't feel very optimistic in London.

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

I don't do proud.

When I die I want to go to Vogue.

I guess I'm the last of the Cockneys.

I've always been a bit flip.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The earth has a life of its own.

Girls are more attractive to me than dresses.

If you're curious, London's an amazing place.

I'm not a philosopher, I'm just a simple boy from East Ham.

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

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

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

I hate men who are in touch with their feminine side.

Being dyslexic, I was told that I was an idiot all the time.

I left school on my 15th birthday.

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

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.

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

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

I am mad about my wife.

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

I always go for simplicity.

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

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've always tried to do pictures that don't date.

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

Nothing wrong with retouching - nothing new about retouching.

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

People want security in this insecure world.

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

The skull is nature's sculpture.

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.

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

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

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

Being trendy is dangerous. I've never been trendy, which is why I've never really fallen out of favour.

I never tried to revolutionise photography; I just do what I do and keep my fingers crossed that people will like it.

Sometimes I still can't believe my luck.

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

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

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.

Being handsome wasn't much of a burden. It worked for me.

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

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

I did painting before I did photography.

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

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