A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
Diane Arbus
My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.
I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.
Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.
I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.
The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.
The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.
Men are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain.
I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.
My favourite thing is to go where I've never been.
You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.
Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present. I want to gather them, like somebody's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful.
I am full of a sense of promise, like I often have: the feeling of always being at the beginning.
This photographing is really the business of stealing.
Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed, and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them.
I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
I used to think consciousness itself was a virtue, so I tried to keep it all in my head at the same time: past, future, etc.
The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.
I hated painting, and I quit right after high school because I was continually told how terrific I was... it made me feel shaky.
When you grow up your mother says, 'Wear rubbers or you'll catch cold.' When you become an adult you discover that you have the right not to wear rubbers and to see if you catch cold or not. It's something like that.
There is so much work to working that there are moments, moments, where I stop and look around, and it seems too arduous to go on. It isn't, of course.
That is why people have jobs and pay checks... it helps keep you from unanswerable questions.
