Diane Arbus Quotes

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.

The world is full of fictional characters looking for their stories

Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.

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 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.

Take pictures of what you fear.

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.

I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.

My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize.

We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. It's what's left when you take everything else away.

Ladies and Gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.

I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.

There's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way.

For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.

Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.

The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.

Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe.

One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.

Lately I've been struck with how I really love what you can't see in a photograph. An actual physical darkness. And it's very thrilling for me to see darkness again.

If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.

If I didn't have a camera, the things I do would be crazy.

I think all families are creepy in a way.

It's always seemed to me that photography tends to deal with facts whereas film tends to deal with fiction.

Shoot for the secrets, develop for the surprises

One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.

I'm very little drawn to photographing people that are known or even subjects that are known. They fascinate me when I've barely heard of them.

I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of.

I mean, it's very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.

You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.

I mean, if you've ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know something you don't.

One thing that struck me early is that you don’t put into a photograph what’s going to come out. Or, vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in.

What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's.... That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own.

The camera is a kind of license.

The discouragement masquerades as the impossibility.

Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.

The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.

These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn't it be lovely? Yes.

The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good as I can to make things even.

Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience.

...I would never choose a subject for what it means to me. I choose a subject and then what I feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold.

And the revelation was a little like what saints receive on mountains - a further chapter in the history of the mystery.

The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.

I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.