Diane Arbus Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.

... I must begin at whatever pace is possible, to work on the book of my own that i vaguely keep assuming lies at the end of the rainbow. It is after all my rainbow and if I don't do it no one else will...Survival is the secret so you really can't afford to doubt yourself for long because you are all you've got. The only thing to do is to go the limit with it. Exceed.

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

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

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.

We stand on a precipice, then before a chasm, and as we wait it becomes higher, wider, deeper, but I am crazy enough to think it doesn't matter which way we leap because when we leap we will have learned to fly. Is that blasphemy or faith?

Take pictures of what you fear.

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

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

When you're growing 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.