Diane Arbus

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

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

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

“The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.”

“Men are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.”

“Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed, and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of t...”

“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.”

“I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.”

“This photographing is really the business of stealing.”

“I hated painting, and I quit right after high school because I was continually told how terrific I was... it made me feel shaky.”

“Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.”