Quotes from William Klein

I always thought I was going to be an artist. I used to draw, and I would read Russian novels until 3 or 4 in the morning.

I saw New York differently after being in Paris for a few years.

In America, kids would go to college and get out and buy a second-hand car and go across the country and discover America. I never did that; I went from New York to Paris, and New York was my America.

When I made 'Polly Maggoo,' it was more or less the end of this collaboration with 'Vogue' because I made a caricature of the editor-in-chief and the fashion people, so they didn't really adore me.

I'm known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In 'Vogue,' girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton.

I think that Damien Hirst putting a shark in a bath of formaldehyde is nothing.

French photography was basically poetic, and mine was vulgar and brash and violent, except that there's never any violence in the photographs: it's only in the photographic style.

Leger was not only the first artist I ever met but also the first pop artist, and he blew our minds.

If I didn't have to earn a living somehow, I would never have taken a fashion photograph in my life.

People didn't object to me taking their photo. It was something everybody thought was their due: to be King for a Day, win the lottery and be photographed.

The kinetic quality of New York, the kids, dirt, madness - I tried to find a photographic style that would come close to it. So I cropped, blurred, played with the negatives.

Fashion had no interest for me. I would take photographs in the studio. I would go back home, and my wife would say, 'What is the fashion like for this season?' And I would say, 'I have no idea.'

Why did I take fashion photographs? I thought it was fun. And there was a lot of money.

Memories. That's the thing about photography. I look at the contact sheet, and it brings back everything: whether I was tired, whether I was full of beans.

I was 24 years old at the time. I had no real notion of what photography was about. I had no training. By accident, I put a negative in an enlarger, and you can do many things with that negative.

Photography led me to experiment in graphic work and, actually, painting.

I had an experience that was kind of backward. Instead of thinking that photography was a step down, it brought me a step up, to transpose and modify things.

When you use film, you use accidents, but there aren't any accidents with digital photography. I don't mind that it's easy. But I do mind that there is a sort of consensus with the camera and the subject and the light, and you look at something, and you photograph it, and you get what you see.

I find it satisfying that what I've done in photography has had so much influence in how people take photographs and what they look at and how they look at things.

I always dreamed of working in Paris, of going to the Coupole and slapping Picasso or Giacometti on the shoulder.

My way of living and working is that I'll do my thing. I went from one thing to another. That annoyed people. They didn't know how to categorize me.

It's as if your parents have to die before you really understand who they are.

Make friends, because come a hurricane, you're going to need them

People only will make an effort to save something they care about, and to care about it, they have to know about it.