Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

William Klein

New York

Always

Apple

" 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. "

" I like film. I'm old fashioned. "

William Klein

Old

Film

" As a kid, I wanted to be part of the Lost Generation who came to France. "

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

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

" I was a very clumsy Jewish kid. "

" 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

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

William Klein

Complaint

Crazy

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I'm an outsider, I guess. "

William Klein

Outsider

Guess

" 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. "

" 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

" The best critics of America are Americans. "

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

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

William Klein

Money

Back

" 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. "

William Klein

Step

Down

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When I made 'Polly Maggoo,' it was more or less the end of this collaboration with 'Vogue' because I made a caricature of the editor-in-chief and the fashion people, so they didn't really adore me. "

William Klein

Fashion

People

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

" 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. "

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

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

" The kinetic quality of New York, the kids, dirt, madness - I tried to find a photographic style that would come close to it. So I cropped, blurred, played with the negatives. "