Diane Arbus Quotes

58 quotes in 760 categories

• Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.
• A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
• 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…
• 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…
• I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
• I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first…
• The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
• My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.
• I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.
• The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.
• 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.
• The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.
• It gets to seem as if way back in the Garden of Eden after the fall, Adam and Eve had begged the Lord to forgive…
• 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…
• If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, I want to come to your house and have you talk…
• 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,…
• One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.
• I don't know what good composition is.... Sometimes for me composition has to do with a certain brightness or a certain coming to restness and…
• If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.

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