I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

- Howard Hodgkin

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.

- Howard Hodgkin

The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed.

- Howard Hodgkin

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything.

- Howard Hodgkin

My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.

- Howard Hodgkin

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute.

- Howard Hodgkin

In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.

- Howard Hodgkin

I think that words are often extraneous to what I do.

- Howard Hodgkin

I once was interviewed and got so exasperated that I said, 'What do you want, a shopping list?' They kept asking, 'What's in this picture?'

- Howard Hodgkin

I hate painting.

- Howard Hodgkin

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.

- Howard Hodgkin

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.

- Howard Hodgkin

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.

- Howard Hodgkin

Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten.

- Howard Hodgkin

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

- Howard Hodgkin

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'

- Howard Hodgkin

I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.

- Howard Hodgkin

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

- Howard Hodgkin

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.

- Howard Hodgkin

A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy.

- Howard Hodgkin