I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.

Trust that little voice in your head that says 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...'; And then do it.

I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.

A lot of photographers walk around looking for something 'out there,' but I'm very much interested in what's 'in here.'

All good children's books, I think, address metaphysical issues in some kind of way.

All good work has magic in it, and addresses the mind in a subtle way.

Art has to address eternal issues.

Even in the deepest love relationship - when lovers say 'I love you' to each other - we don't really know what we're saying, because language isn't equal to the complexity of human emotions.

I got a lot of flak originally for writing with photographs, because the great cliche in photography is that one photograph is worth a thousand words, and photographers are usually dodo birds anyway.

I still find doing portraits a terrific challenge, but even though I've done hundreds of them, I've never stopped questioning the very nature of portraiture because it deals exclusively with appearances. I've never believed people are what they look like and think it's impossible to really know what people are.

I think photographers are too polite. There is not enough anger in photography; it's pretty much trivialized.

I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn't tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.

I'm a terrible punster. And I love to rhyme. I just can't help myself.

In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.

My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

People of my generation who became photographers in the late fifties, early sixties, there were no rewards in photography. There were no museum shows. Maybe MOMA would show something, or Chicago. There were no galleries. Nobody bought photographs.

Photographers usually want to photograph facts and things. But I'm interested in the nature of the thing itself. A photograph of someone sleeping tells me nothing about their dream state; a photograph of a corpse tells me nothing about the nature of death. My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible?

Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people's lives - something they know nothing about - and drawing great inferences into it.

The majority of photographers focus on the obvious. They believe and accept what their eyes tell them, and yet eyes know nothing.

The question of truth is forever in the air, and people look for it with particular fervor in art.

To fulfil a fantasy is the quickest way to destroy it.

To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.

Usually when painters use photographs, they enlarge and copy them and simply make a large, boring painting of a large, boring photograph.

You can't see fear or lust; you can't photograph someone's anxieties, how disappointment feels. Photographs are approximations.

Most portraits are lies. People are rarely what they appear to be, especially in front of a camera. You might know me your entire lifetime and never reveal yourself to me. To interpret wrinkles as character is insult not insight.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination.

We especially need imagination in science.

There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen.

He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.

You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination - at the same time, you want to be truthful to the predecessors, because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent.

To them though, not to us, we were just a catalyst for their imagination.

In this drawing we just let our imagination run wild. We visualized Superman toys, games, and a radio show - that was before TV - and Superman movies. We even visualized Superman billboards. And it's all come true.

To put yourself in another's place requires real imagination, but by doing so each Girl Scout will be able to love among others happily.

If you use your imagination, you can look at any actress and see her nude... I hope to make you use your imagination.

Toy Soldiers was my introduction to film. I certainly didn't think I was doing art by any stretch of the imagination.

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting. I think getting beyond the four edges of an opportunity or challenge is one of the basic skills you need in business.

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.

The travel writer seeks the world we have lost - the lost valleys of the imagination.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.