I always go for simplicity.

I like change. There’s something Buddhist about it – continuous change is wonderful.

The only thing they can’t teach you at art school is art.

You have to kind of be invisible when you photograph children, so you use a longer lens.

Rockers are the nicest people to photograph. They have no inhibitions.

I always look at people and think how I would cast them.

I have always wanted to live in the present and never the past.

I have never met an ugly woman.

In France they don’t think I’m difficult.

I’ve been used by women all my life, fortunately.

The first half of the 20th century belongs to Picasso, and the second half is about photography. They said digital would kill photography because everyone can do it, but they said that about the box...

I never cared for fashion much, amusing little seams and witty little pleats: it was the girls I liked.

Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that.

Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don’t know if you’re getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they’re...

The trouble with people like Tony Blair is they get confused, they think intelligence is education when they’re two different things.

I am not responsible for all the journalists in the past that have told lies.

I just thought it was magic that you could stick a bit of paper in some coffee-type liquid and a picture comes out.

If I have any sexist feelings they are aimed at men: I hate manly men.

It always amazes me when people ask you to do something and then tell you how to do it.

I’ve had some weird experiences.

I never tried to revolutionise photography; I just do what I do and keep my fingers crossed that people will like it.

Sometimes I still can’t believe my luck.

Everyone gets old – there’s nothing you can do about it.

All my ex-girlfriends or wives are all kind of great friends and I’ve never understood somebody who can live with somebody for five or six years and then not like them.

Girls are more attractive to me than dresses.

I could develop a picture by the time I was 12.

I sort of fall in love with them when I’m photographing them – men and women.

The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading.

In New York, everyone’s desperate for success, desperate for money and desperate to be accepted, but in London they’re more laid back about things like that.

It’s only a few nutcases who do art for themselves, like Van Gogh.

I’ve never been anti-women.

It’s not about composition. It’s the way you feel about how your objects should relate to each other. I’ve got lots of African statues and things, and the cleaner arranges them like soldiers, which drives...

I was a terrible father. The most I ever did for my children was to teach them chess. At least they got that.

Good shoes are important. I wear English brogues in a wide fitting. They last me years.

In ’73 I photographed the cannibals in New Guinea. They treated me OK but they didn’t make you feel relaxed… I managed to escape unscathed though, I’m pretty good at that.

You can’t really copy what I do because I don’t do anything.

I did painting before I did photography.

I suppose because my work was so popular people didn’t really look at it.

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...

I don’t see the point of photographing trees or rocks because they’re there and anyone can photograph them if they’re prepared to hang around and wait for the light.

John Parsons, the gay art director at ‘Vogue,’ really started my career.

In a way, a man’s body is more beautiful than a woman’s.

I was surrounded by strong women so it had never even occurred to me that women were anything other than equal to men.

It is a sign of a dull nature to occupy oneself deeply in matters that concern the body; for instance, to be over much occupied about exercise, about eating and drinking, about easing oneself, about...

I don’t do proud.

I won’t do advertising if they bring a layout and say, ‘This is what we want to do,’ because anybody can do that; it’s not interesting. They’ve got digital and the computer; it’s not taking...

All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they’re about dead people. Paintings you don’t think of in a special time or with a specific event. With photos I always think I’m looking at...

I didn’t know a time when there wasn’t a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.

I used to love the ’20s.

A positive attitude can really make dreams come true – it did for me.