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All Quotes by author - William Klein
" As a kid, I wanted to be part of the Lost Generation who came to France. "
Kid
Lost
Part
" Being an expatriate doesn't go down well in America. "
Being
America
Down
" Don't have rules, taboos, or limits. "
Taboos
Limits
Rules
" Fashion had no interest for me. I would take photographs in the studio. I would go back home, and my wife would say, 'What is the fashion like for this season?' And I would say, 'I have no idea.' "
Say
Back
Fashion
" Fashion was more of a sideline for me. I did it for the money. "
Fashion
Me
More
" For my first book, 'New York,' I had one camera and two lenses. It was fotografia povera. "
Book
Two
New York
" French photography was basically poetic, and mine was vulgar and brash and violent, except that there's never any violence in the photographs: it's only in the photographic style. "
Never
Violence
Photography
" I always dreamed of working in Paris, of going to the Coupole and slapping Picasso or Giacometti on the shoulder. "
Working
Going
Paris
" I always dreamt of becoming an artist in Paris. Thanks to the Army, it happened. "
Thanks
Army
Paris
" I always thought I was going to be an artist. I used to draw, and I would read Russian novels until 3 or 4 in the morning. "
Artist
Going
Thought
" I did a film on Muhammad Ali before he was champion. I was there when he became champion in 1964. I was happy to be able to document the development of a real American hero. "
American
Happy
Hero
" I didn't really know who Cassius Clay was. I just wanted to show America through a heavyweight championship fight. Ever since my childhood, I'd been fascinated by the way the whole country becomes polarised around this event. "
Know
America
Childhood
" I discovered that I could do whatever I wanted with a negative in a darkroom and an enlarger. "
Darkroom
Whatever
Wanted
" If a film is a real knockout like 'Raging Bull,' it does not matter that it might not have happened like that. "
Like
Matter
Real
" If I didn't have to earn a living somehow, I would never have taken a fashion photograph in my life. "
Never
Living
Life
" If I look back, I think most of the things I did - the films, the books, the collaborations with these magazines - were mostly by accident. "
Most
Look
Things
" I find it satisfying that what I've done in photography has had so much influence in how people take photographs and what they look at and how they look at things. "
Influence
Photography
People
" I grew up in Manhattan. For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible... for me, that was like a foreign country. "
Brooklyn
Country
Friends
" I grew up in New York, in a rough neighborhood where our biggest concern was not getting beat up. I was always far from the center of the Big Apple. "
New York
Always
Apple
" I had an experience that was kind of backward. Instead of thinking that photography was a step down, it brought me a step up, to transpose and modify things. "
Step
Me
Down
" I had no real respect for good technique because I didn't know what it was. I was self-taught, so that stuff didn't matter to me. "
Matter
Me
Know
" I like dark humor. I think the world is very funny and tragic, and my photographs are basically dark Jewish humor. "
Dark
World
Funny
" I like festivals of all kinds: in 1969, I made a film about the first Pan-African festival in Algiers, which celebrated the countries that had been liberated 10 years earlier. There was a tremendous feeling of kinship. "
Film
Feeling
Festivals
" I like film. I'm old fashioned. "
Old
Like
Film
" I like the streets. I grew up in the streets. "
Streets
Like
Grew
" I'm an outsider, I guess. "
Outsider
Guess
" I'm known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In 'Vogue,' girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton. "
Play
Fashion
Brooklyn
" In America, kids would go to college and get out and buy a second-hand car and go across the country and discover America. I never did that; I went from New York to Paris, and New York was my America. "
College
America
Car
" In fashion, you have assistants, flashes; you can make sets. There are people running around doing things for you. But I can take it or leave it. "
Doing
Fashion
You
" In the late Fifties and early Sixties, I used to think that most of these fashion creators weren't that great, and if the photograph was good, it was mostly thanks to the photographer. "
Think
Early
Late
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