Brandon Stanton Quotes

The camera adds a certain sheen to things. Something about being frozen in time really makes things sparkle.

I am a huge fan of biographies. What I'm always looking for is a story. I want a story I have never heard from anyone else.

My dad died in 9/11. They opened up the museum to families today, so I went this morning. My plan was to go to work after, but I just couldn't do it.""What happened to him?""He was a cop. He actually had the day off. But as soon as he heard, he drove into the city and got there just in time for the second tower to fall. A witness said that my dad had started to run when the tower fell, but turned back because a trapped woman was calling to him.""What do you remember?""I was in science class. And my teacher told us that there had been a plane crash. That's all she said. Then I noticed all these kids around me getting phone calls and text messages, and they'd run out of class. So I knew something big was happening. Soon we got let out of school. On the ride home, I remember thinking that my dad was going to be working overtime on this. I imagined he'd be down there everyday, saving people. 'I bet I won't see him for weeks,' I said.

Social media is a superimposing place where people are usually bragging.

I think it's important to try to get on a kid's level when taking their photo.

Without social media, I'd probably just be a quirky, amateur photographer with a hard drive full of photos. I'd be cold calling respected publications, begging for a feature.

Fortunately, I've done so many interviews that I've become very good at detecting when someone is giving a less-than-candid reply.

Who's influenced you the most in your life?" "My principal, Ms. Lopez." "How has she influenced you?" "When we get in trouble, she doesn't suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us. And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter.

A lot of the children I photograph are extremely colorfully dressed in some way. But I also find a lot of kids with outsized personalities or who happen to be doing something charming.

Jealousy. Depression. Love. They pretty much demonstrate the whole range of human emotion.

Every time I force myself to go outside something wonderful happens (Humans of New York photographed subject)

Sometimes it's hard not to fall in love with your friends.

Everybody asks, 'What does 'Humans of New York' mean?' and I always say that I try to avoid putting any kind of message in the work even if it is a positive or optimistic message. The moment you do that, you're looking for certain people and words that fit into the world view you are trying to show, and it becomes preachy.

I didn't actually begin photographing, or even visit New York, for the first time until I was 26.

I don't want to interview people for the purpose of developing a world view and pushing that on people.

As an artist in the 21st century, my two goals are to make the best work that I can, improve as much as I can, and to distribute that work as far as I can.

I get way too sensitive when I get attached to someone. I can detect the slightest change in the tone of their voice, and suddenly I'm spending all day trying to figure out what I did wrong.

Just work. Don't wait. Everybody's waiting until they have the perfect idea to start working. Even if you have an inkling of what you want to do, start moving towards it. And it's going to flesh itself out through the process of moving towards the goal. And by the time you get to where you're going to be, it's not going to look anything like it did when you sat on the couch thinking about it. And if you wait until it's perfect in your head before you get of the couch and start working on it, that's never going to happen.

My interviews are very pointed. I'm an active participant; I will kindly interrupt people. But I've learned there is nothing people won't tell you if you ask in a compassionate and legitimately interested way.

'Humans of New York' is basically somebody walking up to absolute strangers on the street every day and, within minutes, talking with them about very personal things. Some things they haven't even told their best friends or family members.

When my husband was dying, I said: Moe, how am I supposed to live without you? He told me: take the love you have for me and spread it around.

It's a very immersive and intense form of travel to walk around with an interpreter and stop random people on the street and ask them about their lives.

When I first started 'Humans of New York,' I was writing short stories. There were about 50 of them. And, you know, they were a great part of the site, but the photography just started growing so fast that I didn't have time to make them anymore.

I never know what kind of people I'll meet just by stopping to take a photo.

I've learned that every feeling will pass if you give it time. And if you learn to deal with your feelings, they'll pass by faster each time. So don't rush to cover them up by medicating them. You've got to deal with them.

Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you're grown up. Growing up means being patient, holding your temper, cutting out the self-pity, and quitting with the righteous indignation.'
'Why do so many people seem to love righteous indignation?'
'Because if you can prove you're a victim, all rules are off. You can lash out at people. You don't have to be accountable for anything.

I've taken pictures in at least 14 countries, and nowhere have people told me 'no' more than New York City.

When you are interviewing refugees, each person you talk to has a different story that could come from a horror movie. So many people talk about seeing their families get murdered before their eyes. Then I go to Central Park, and people are talking about their third divorce and paying tuition.

When I meet somebody in the street who knows about 'Humans of New York,' a lot of times they might have a scripted answer, and that scripted answer is the first thing to come out of their mouth.

If you love the wrong one so much, just imagine how much you can love the right one.

I always say that my favorite people to interview are the people who are at the beginning and the ends of their lives because they have two alternate perspectives of the world, and neither of them are less profound.

We're eye doctors."
"What's something about the eye that most people don't realize?"
"The eye doesn't see. The brain sees. The eye just transmits. So what we see isn't only determined by what comes through the eyes. What we see is affected by our memories, our feelings, and by what we've seen before.

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It's the rejection that is hard. It's not the interviewing that's hard. It's not the photography that's hard. It's, you know, approaching people all day long and having a good portion of those people reject you and some of them be rude.

The most pivotal moments in people's lives revolve around emotions. Emotions make stories powerful.

Right after I lost vision in my eye, I was so bad at walking that I ran into a girl eating ice cream, and knocked her cone out of her hand. She screamed: 'Are you blind!?!?' I turned to her and said: 'I am blind actually, I'm so sorry, I'll buy you a new cone.' And she said: 'Oh my God! I'm so sorry! Don't worry! It's no problem at all! I'll buy another one.' So we walked into the ice cream store together, and the clerk said: 'I heard the whole thing. Ice cream is free.

It might be a cultural thing, but I was always scolded for showing emotion. Sadness was always met with anger.

In an age of iPhones and Playstations, it's great to see that somebody's still rocking the bus-on-a-string.

Judging by everyone's excitement, this day will always be remembered at the loading dock as the day 'Larry made it on the internet'.

I never buy plane tickets out of a country until I'm in the country, so I get on the ground, figure out what I need, where I'm going, how much time I need, and schedule as I go along.

I think everyone feels alone in their sadness, and there's a certain value to hearing other people's sad stories.

So what I am always looking for is, I'm always looking for something that that person has told me that nobody else has told me. It is normally not an opinion, and it is normally not a philosophy. It's almost always a story. Because we all share similar philosophies, we all share similar opinions on a lot of different issues, but all of our stories are our own.

Wherever I go, I just try to show normal life. If the work helps to dispel stereotypes, it's because I seek not to portray the extremities of a place, but the vast majority of people who are quite normal and are having normal life experiences.

I don't like to interview people in front of their friends; they clam up.

I used to be a butcher. She used to come into my store. Every week I would set apart the best piece of meat for her. And look how it turned out - I ended up with the best piece of meat of them all.

At some point during my travels, I had a slight change of focus which would end up defining the rest of my career. I began taking pictures of people. In addition to all the buildings, street signs and fire hydrants, I started photographing some of the interesting humans that passed by me on the street.

It's a good poem if I'm a different person when I'm finished reading it.

The great thing about New York is that if you sit in one place long enough, the whole world comes to you.

I have a lot of mental illness right now. Half of my energy goes into taking care of myself. I've been daydreaming about shaving my head fully 'cause then I'll look as sick as I feel.

The amplitudes of life get smaller as you age. There are less and less things to experience for the first time. And each time you experience something, you don't get quite as excited. But you don't get quite as hurt, either. I wonder what it will feel like when I'm seventy ...

I know I have a caption that I'm going to use when somebody tells me something I've never heard before. It's very rarely a thought, a philosophy, when somebody says, 'Oh, I don't like cheese' or 'Oh, I think the government should be overthrown,' because so many people share these thoughts. But what people don't share is stories.

To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.

Shes's always been very accepting and patient with my trust issues. I've always had a hard time getting close. But no matter how many times I doubted, she just kept saying: 'I'm not going anywhere.

The only things I make money on are speeches and books.

If I had sat around and waited until I had an idea to be a successful photographer, I would still be in finance.

I'm homeless, and I'm an alcoholic. But I have a dream.'
'What's that?'
'I wanna go fishing.

I'm not even really attempting to brand myself outside of 'Humans of New York.' I think part of the reason for my success is that I've put my ego aside and said I'm not going to put all of my effort into trying to promote myself. I'm going to try to promote my work and am going to try to promote my project.

I am interviewing people with a spirit of genuine interest and compassion, and therefore, the general tone of the site is one of genuine interest and compassion. The moment that culture changes, 'Humans of New York' is no longer viable.

In some neighborhoods, faces mature faster than bodies.

There are two books in America: one for the poor and one for the rich. The poor person does a crime and gets forty years. A rich person gets a slap on the wrist for the same crime.

It seems that everywhere I go, people want the same things - security, education, family. It's just that so many people have no avenues through which to obtain these things.

Main thing is just to remember that hard work got me here and only hard work will keep me here.

Somebody's willingness to let me photograph them, and willingness to tell me a story, has nothing to do with the words I say. It all has to do with the energy I'm giving off, which hopefully is very genuine, very interested energy. It's just two people having a conversation in the street. I think that's where genuine content comes from.

'Humans of New York' did not result from a flash on inspiration. It grew from five years of experimenting, tinkering, and messing up.

Of all the places I've been, India is the one that's on the top of my list to return to.

Interviewing someone is a very proactive process and requires taking a lot of agency into your own hands to get past people's general normal self-preservation mode.

The interviews have gotten much longer with 'Humans of New York.' When I was first starting, I was just photographing people. And then I went to just kind of including a quote or two. Now when I'm approaching somebody on the street, I'm spending about 30 to 45 minutes with them often.

She had the most beautiful awkwardness