Quotes from David LaChapelle

I love fashion, beauty, glamour. It's the mark of civilisation.

I shoot fantasy. If you want reality, ride the bus

You just do what you love, and then a style happens later on.

I love fashion and beauty and all those things, I still do but I think that it has changed the shift, that the greed is ruling the planet right now.

I have no interest in being famous. I just want to make famous photographs.

There are going to be people doing the talking and people who get talked about, choose, which one do you want to be?

The tools I learned photographing celebrities, now I want to use them to sell ideas.

As you get older, you think about things differently from when you do in your twenties, when you think you'll live forever.

We use fashion for status and to beautify and there's nothing wrong with that, but when it becomes completely unbalanced, then you're living a decadent life. And when that happens on a global scale, you're living in a decadent world.

My mum was one of those people who really wasn't allowed to be an artist, because she worked in a factory and she came from the war and all that stuff. She really has an artist's soul.

I moved to New York when I was 15, but my parents lived nearby in Connecticut, so I could go be in this incredible countryside when I needed it.

My work is about making candy for the eyes. It's about grabbing your attention.

I was always painting when I was a kid. But then when I handled a camera when I was 17, that was it for me. I loved photography. I would work 4 or 5 hours a day. It was like a calling.

I went to art high school and thought I'd be a painter. Unfortunately I didn't finish high school, but that's always been part of my work.

In the fashion world, I was always an outsider, but I made people look good, so I had a career.

I like the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas more than the actual one.

My mother taught me a lot about respect for all living things - for plants and animals. I am a vegetarian. I was brought up that way.

I like thinking about the fragility of the human flesh and our bodies - our decay and eventual death.