“A woman said to me when she first sat down, You're photographing the wrong side of my face. I said, Oh, is there one?”

“Anybody is influenced by where and how he lives.”

“Everybody who does anything for the public can be criticized. There's always someone who doesn't like it.”

“Get it out of your historic head.”

“I became kind of a drop-out in science after I came back to America. I wanted to photograph.”

“I don't know what love means.”

“I don't love the world. I think Jupiter should have hit us.”

“I don't resent anything.”

“I don't talk about success. I don't know what it is. Wait until I'm dead.”

“I don't think there's any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent.”

“I hate big models.”

“I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn't have a darkroom, but that didn't stop me from photographing.”

“I think San Francisco is the best place in the whole world for an easy life.”

“I told the students that whatever they did in class was for the wastebasket.”

“I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.”

“I was brought up on art. My father thought I had a great hand at art and sent me to art school. But he did not want me to become a photographer.”

“I was invited to photograph Hollywood. They asked me what I would like to photograph. I said, Ugly men.”

“I was poor. When you're poor you work, and when you're rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.”

“It's silly to keep people alive who have a terrible disease.”

“My mind is vacant on names, but I know him as well as anything. When I need names they drop out of my head; when I don't need them they drop back.”

“Oh, you ask me, what is the greatest torture of a person who does portraits for a living? I could fill several volumes with nice nasty stories. I don't know.”

“Some people say to me, Isn't it too bad that people discovered you so late? I never thought that.”

“There are certain things you don't discuss with Ansel, especially if you don't agree.”

“When people ask me silly questions about my private life, I just say, I don't discuss that.”

“When People magazine called me, I did the job on Ansel. I'm older than Ansel and he has to mind me.”

“When you do portraits professionally it's not a desire, it's for money.”