Quotes from Diane Arbus

That is why people have jobs and pay checks... it helps keep you from unanswerable questions.

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.

My favourite thing is to go where I've never been.

I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present. I want to gather them, like somebody's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful.

There is so much work to working that there are moments, moments, where I stop and look around, and it seems too arduous to go on. It isn't, of course.

You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.

My favorite thing is to go where I have never gone.

Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience.

The more specific you are the more general it'll be.

This photographing is really the business of stealing.

I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.

For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.

What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's.... That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own.

A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.

Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.

I used to think consciousness itself was a virtue, so I tried to keep it all in my head at the same time: past, future, etc.

A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.

For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.

There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.

My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.

I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.

Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding

What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's.... That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own.