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" 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. "

William Klein

Brooklyn

Country

Friends

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" My complaint is that Americans drive me crazy, and the politics drive me crazy. "

William Klein

Complaint

Crazy

" I was 24 years old at the time. I had no real notion of what photography was about. I had no training. By accident, I put a negative in an enlarger, and you can do many things with that negative. "

" 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. "

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

" If I didn't have to earn a living somehow, I would never have taken a fashion photograph in my life. "

" Fashion was more of a sideline for me. I did it for the money. "

William Klein

Fashion

" 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. "

" For my first book, 'New York,' I had one camera and two lenses. It was fotografia povera. "

" When you use film, you use accidents, but there aren't any accidents with digital photography. I don't mind that it's easy. But I do mind that there is a sort of consensus with the camera and the subject and the light, and you look at something, and you photograph it, and you get what you see. "

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

" I thought it would be good not to hide the fact that you're taking a photograph, and have people react and come in close and also make a commentary on what's being photographed: 'This is a photo, this is my point of view.' "

" You do things for yourself, and you do things for other people, and you hope that these things coincide. "

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" What's very funny is when you see amateurs filming something, they do some things no professionals would dare to do. They instinctively do things that are very avant-garde and useful. "

" I thought it would be a good idea to look at New York with this half-European, half-native eye and really do something to get back at this city that I thought really gave me a hard time when I grew up. "

" 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. "

" The best critics of America are Americans. "

" 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 was fascinated by the Black Panthers because I'd been in contact with the Nation of Islam, thanks to Muhammad Ali, and their way of talking was that the whites were the devil, and they'd get rid of them once they took over. "

" My father was convinced that America was the greatest place in the world. I'm afraid I didn't have the family I would have dreamed of. "

" 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. "

" 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 always dreamt of becoming an artist in Paris. Thanks to the Army, it happened. "

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

" 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. "