David Bailey quotes:

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I hate being so nostalgic about the Sixties.

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

Everyone gets old - there's nothing you can do about it.

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

Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that.

I love learning new techniques.

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

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

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

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

Rather than knowing more, I think I've got more open-minded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The earth has a life of its own.

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.

I left school on my 15th birthday.

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 am mad about my wife.

People want security in this insecure world.

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

I never cared for fashion much, amusing little seams and witty little pleats: it was the girls I liked.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

When I die I want to go to Vogue.

The skull is nature's sculpture.

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

I sort of fall in love with them when I'm photographing them - men and women.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Nothing wrong with retouching - nothing new about retouching.

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

My exploits are nothing now to the average person.

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

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

I was a terrible father. The most I ever did for my children was to teach them chess. At least they got that.

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

I have never met an ugly woman.

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

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

Sometimes I still can't believe my luck.

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

I used to love the '20s.

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

I'm not really one for regrets.

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

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

I've always been a bit flip.

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

I always go for simplicity.

My paintings are rubbish.

I never set out to be a photographer.

You adapt to who you're photographing.

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

I was ten when I got my first serious beating. It was rough.

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

I don't feel very optimistic in London.

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

Girls are more attractive to me than dresses.

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

Journalists never make it clear when you are joking.

My first influence obviously was Picasso.