Peter Beard Quotes

Being so pathetic, I don't read. I just ... do things - writing out interviews you can't read, on pictures of footprints and things like that. I kind of like the idea of nailing the thing down and not really showing too much about it. There's just so much you can take for collage nowadays.

I used to do horseback riding in the South, and it was just things I'd be pasting. I think my diaries was just an infantile desire to record things. I liked saving things instead of writing.

I am a parasite off beauty.

I think the camera is a wonderful machine, don't you? And not to take photographs in this century is crazy.

Photography should be redefined. It's largely technical... Photography is just unbelievably limiting. I always think of David Bailey and all the fashion photographers - they overlap, you can't always tell who did it. I don't really even like photography all that much. I just think it's so overdone.

Like society, the diary is a world of useless secrets. Everything is there, yet there is nothing.

The whole world is a scab. The point is to pick it constructively.

I like things that don't look like you're in control. It's like life itself. You just learn how to benefit from accidents and chances that you take.

I had some highlight moments in the early '60s when I used to do a lot of rubbings. I used Afta; it's an amazing chemical. If you pour it on something and rub, you get amazing results. Before that, I used lighter fluid and, well, I've always liked blood. Everybody thinks I am very sick, but the thing is, blood is better than any ink or paint.