William Klein Quotes

If I have any 'message' worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.

I never went to a photography school, which was my saving grace.

I think the camera is a wonderful machine, don't you? And not to take photographs in this century is crazy.

It's pretty amazing to see a guy, while steering at the wheel, suddenly raise his little 300 dollar German camera with one hand and snap something that's on the move in front of him, and through an unwashed windshield at that. (On the road with Robert Frank, 1958)

Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.

I've grown up around people who love photography, and I think from being photographed for so long, I always wanted to understand how it worked, and I've been fortunate enough to be photographed by some really wonderful photographers, and so I learnt a lot from them, and I always ask them questions.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

I guess I've shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures I like.

You can't teach people photography, they've got to learn how to do it the best way possible for them. They can learn from looking at pictures taken by well-known people, but they don't really get intimate with the medium until they've made a few bad shots!

One reads thousands of books, of poets, modern and ancient, as one meets thousands of people. What remains of it all is hard to tell.

I've thought of becoming a photographer! To save my talent as a writer.

Repetition is the key to real learning.

Photography is my one recreation and I think it should be done well.

The [35mm] camera is for life and for people, the swift and intense moments of life.

I used to always love taking photos, but I would always give a camera away to someone else. Now I don't give the camera away anymore. It also takes a long time to develop a visual style, and I think that the things that I was imitating were people I love, like Judy Linn or Gerald Turner, and then it slowly started to become more myself.

Do you have a camera?" Jackson asked. "We could get some pictures and may be take a print or two if we're lucky." Jonas shook his head. "We'd probably get a bunch of ghosts and that would just freak me out.

Repetition is the father of learning.

One of these days, I'm going to publish a book of all the pictures I did not take.

The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good.

Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.

The very essence of success is practice.

Kodachrome, it gives us those nice bright colors Gives us the greens of summers Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah! I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph So momma, don't take my Kodachrome away.

An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.

Knowledge is honestly everything. It's not just books and staying behind a desk and having a diploma. There's also traveling and knowledge about people, and what I do and scripts and books.

There's no future in our past. Just experience. We want to return to it, but we don't want to close the door on it either.