Quotes from Annie Leibovitz

I'm more interested in being good than being famous.

There's an idea that it's hard to be a woman artist. People assume that women have fewer opportunities, less power. But it's not any harder to be a woman artist than to be a male artist. We all take what we are given and use the parts of ourselves that feed the work. We make our way. Photographers, men and women, are particularly lucky. Photography lets you find yourself. It is a passport to people and places and to possibilities.

For me, the story about the pictures is about almost losing myself, and coming back, and what it means to be deeply involved in a subject. The thing that saved me was that I had my camera by my side. It was there to remind me who I was and what I did. It separated me from them.

I don't have two lives. This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it.

Things happen in front of you. That's perhaps the most wonderful and mysterious aspect of photography. It seemed like you just had to decide when and where to aim the camera. The process was linear and it never stopped. That's still true, although I've traded in my need for always taking pictures. I can't let them go by sometimes now and just be there.

Abraham helped build their cabin and split rails for a fence, but he soon left home for good. The log cabin near Decatur was, I learned, the one that went on tour after the assassination. It was dismantled by John Hanks, Lincoln's second cousin, and taken to Chicago and then to Boston. The last sighting of it, as least as far as we can ascertain, was at P.T. Barnum's museum in New York. It was apparently lost at sea while being shipped to England.

Everyone keeps asking you for pictures, and after a while you get tired of that. I always say, They are in the archives.

I was with Tom Wolfe at the launch of Apollo 17, which led him to 'The Right Stuff.'

It's hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time.

I sometimes find the surface interesting. To say that the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them or get the soul - I don't think this is possible all of the time.

One of the great things about being an older person is that I am very aware of the scope of the work and the historical sense of it. It's bigger than me.

What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.

I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.

If I didn't have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.

I went on tour with the Rolling Stones in 1972 for two or three cities. And in 1975, I was the tour photographer for the Rolling Stones. I hung onto my camera for dear life. Because it scared the hell out of me.

Everyone has a point of view. Some people call it style, but what we're really talking about is the guts of a photograph. When you trust your point of view, that's when you start taking pictures.

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can't.

My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.

There are still so many places on our planet that remain unexplored. I'd love to one day peel back the mystery and understand them.

I went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute, thinking I was going to become an art teacher. Within the first six months I was there, I was told that I couldn't be an art teacher unless I became an artist first.

Irving Penn said he didn't want to photograph anyone under 60, and I think there is some truth about it.

I personally made a decision many years ago that I wanted to crawl into portraiture because it had a lot of latitude.

I went to Yosemite as an homage to Ansel Adams. I could never be Ansel Adams, but to know that's there for us - there's so much for us in this country.

Lennon was very helpful. What he taught me seems completely obvious: he expected people to treat each other well.