Quotes from William Klein

I was a very clumsy Jewish kid.

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

I have a special relationship with God. And when I take the right photograph, God gives me a little bing! in the camera. And then I know I'm on the right track.

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.

The best critics of America are Americans.

Don't have rules, taboos, or limits.

The digital camera takes photographs in practically no light: it will dig out the least bit of light available. I was amazed to see the results of photographs that I wouldn't take ordinarily. That's the advantage of digital photography.

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

What would please me most is to make photographs as incomprehensible as life.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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