Quotes from William Klein

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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 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.

I think it's obscene. I don't know how you support the monarchy. How can you do that?

Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn't look like somebody else's work.

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.

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 like the streets. I grew up in the streets.

I'm an outsider, I guess.

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