Quotes by David Bailey

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

"I don't think global warming is to do with us, I think it's a natural circle. I don't think a few Ferraris make that much difference."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"I hate being so nostalgic about the Sixties."

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

"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary."

"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"To get rich, you have to be making money while you're asleep."

"The skull is nature's sculpture."

"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."

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

"Girls are more attractive to me than dresses."

"Anybody can be a great photographer if they zoom in enough on what they love."

"I love learning new techniques."

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

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

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

"I like change. There's something Buddhist about it - continuous change is wonderful."

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

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

"I left school on my 15th birthday."

"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."

"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."

"In New York, everyone's desperate for success, desperate for money and desperate to be accepted, but in London they're more laid back about things like that."

"I always go for simplicity."