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

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

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.

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?

Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.

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.

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.

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

It would be beautiful to photograph the winners of everything from Nobel to booby prize, clutching trophy, or money or certificate, solemn or smiling or tear stained or bloody, on the precarious pinnacle of the human landscape.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.

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

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

There are an awful lot of people in the world and it's going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them... It was my teacher Lisette Model who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it will be.

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

What moves me about...what's called technique...is that it comes from some mysterious deep place. I mean it can have something to do with the paper and the developer and all that stuff, but it comes mostly from some very deep choices somebody has made that take a long time and keep haunting them.

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.


all by Diane Arbus