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" 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. "

William Klein

Know

America

Childhood

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" Most of the other soldiers were older than me and sent money back to their families, so they were more prudent. "

William Klein

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" Memories. That's the thing about photography. I look at the contact sheet, and it brings back everything: whether I was tired, whether I was full of beans. "

" 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. "

" I discovered that I could do whatever I wanted with a negative in a darkroom and an enlarger. "

" I always dreamed of working in Paris, of going to the Coupole and slapping Picasso or Giacometti on the shoulder. "

" 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. "

" If a film is a real knockout like 'Raging Bull,' it does not matter that it might not have happened like that. "

William Klein

Matter

Real

" I wasn't part of any movement. I was working alone, following my instinct. "

" 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. "

" I was making a film on Muhammad Ali in 1964, and I went to Miami to film everything around the fight for the world championship with Sonny Liston. I had the good luck of flying down to Miami, and there was one empty seat, and the guy sitting next to this empty seat was Malcolm X. "

" Being an expatriate doesn't go down well in America. "

" My grandfather and his wife came to America at the end of the 19th century from Hungary. Everyone started out on the Lower East Side. They became embourgeoise and would move to the Upper West Side. Then, if they'd make money, they'd move to Park Avenue. Their kids would become artists and move down to the Lower East Side and the Village. "

" 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. "

" My sister was brilliant: she was in the 25 top math students in the country. When she finished college, I said, 'Spend a couple of months here in Europe. You'll get another take on life.' She never came - married some schmuck who made clothes for fat women on Seventh Avenue. "

" 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. "

" When I was a kid in New York, long before saturation sports coverage, the world heavyweight championship was, with the baseball World Series, the great national event. "

" People didn't object to me taking their photo. It was something everybody thought was their due: to be King for a Day, win the lottery and be photographed. "

" I like dark humor. I think the world is very funny and tragic, and my photographs are basically dark Jewish humor. "

" Leger was not only the first artist I ever met but also the first pop artist, and he blew our minds. "

" The best critics of America are Americans. "

" I think that Damien Hirst putting a shark in a bath of formaldehyde is nothing. "

" Why did I take fashion photographs? I thought it was fun. And there was a lot of money. "

" This is supposed to be the Big Apple, with neighborhoods where the houses are all good-looking and the skyscrapers and everything. But to me, New York is kind of shoddy and uncomfortable. "

" My way of living and working is that I'll do my thing. I went from one thing to another. That annoyed people. They didn't know how to categorize me. "

William Klein

Way

People

" My father was like Willy Loman, you know: he never really made it - and he was from a family where there were people who had made it. "

" 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. "

William Klein

Matter

Know

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I like the streets. I grew up in the streets. "

William Klein

Streets

Grew