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"I think that words are often extraneous to what I do."
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"The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science."

"Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding."

"As useful as an unhappy artist. As useless as a happy philosopher."

"You do not need a boyfriend or a girlfriend to write an emotional poet, because poetry is beyond hooks and holes."

"To see things as the poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he looks and not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles; in fine, as Professor Alexander would say, I must enjoy him and not contemplate him."
Explore more quotes by Howard Hodgkin

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

"I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient."

"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?'"

"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."

"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."

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

"I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself."
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