Your aim as a photographer is to get a picture of that person that means something. Portraits aren't fantasies; they need to tell a truth.

I like capturing stuff that is disappearing - that’s the point of photography. What I am photographing is an imaginary place that never existed, but is connected to something that has already been.

Only photograph what you love.

I don’t believe in originality. You take inspiration from whatever moves you and you find your voice in those things.

I've never been in love with fashion, actually; trends and catwalks don't interest me. I love clothes; I love them historically and currently. They represent a spirit of the times and the zeitgeist.

The point of fashion is that you take the picture you want. And fashion is the only photography that allows fantasy, and I'm a fantasist.

It is very difficult to make the ideas in my head come to life, but what is harder is making them look effortless.

I'm very particular who I work with. I'm not interested in portraying women with a cliched, generic look. I'm interested in a model who I can take a portrait of.

I know the world that I am painting is not a reality. It is a whim, an entertainment to provoke something in people, whether as escapism or relief. I think that is very valid.

You have to raise the bar. Give yourself a challenge. Ask yourself, 'How can one make the impossible materialise?'

My heartbeat shall be hope.

The military weapon is but one of the means that serve the purposes of war: one out of the assortment which grand strategy can employ.

As a teenager, my favourite rejection was, 'She looks too healthy,' which of course translates as, 'She needs to lose weight.'

Life is for the strong, to be lived by the strong and if need be, taken by the strong. The weak were put on earth to give the strong pleasure.

Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.

Who are we beyond the roles that we play?

Architecture wrote the history of the epochs and gave them their names.

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

I prepare so no one can take what is mine, no one can replace my mind, my heart.

And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear, millions of mischiefs.