Saul Leiter Quotes

If I'd only known which [photographs] would be very good and liked, I wouldn't have had to do all the thousands of others.

Sometimes I'm amazed by how much you can do as a photographer.

I must admit that I am not a member of the ugly school. I have a great regard for certain notions of beauty even though to some it is an old fashioned idea. Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.

I may be old-fashioned. But I believe there is such a thing as a search for beauty - a delight in the nice things in the world. And I don't think one should have to apologise for it.

Photography is about finding things. And painting is different - it's about making something.

My brothers were rabbis. My grandfather was a rabbi.

Photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you'd never paid attention to.

I think I've said this before many times - that photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you had never paid any attention to. And as you photograph, one of the benefits is that the world becomes a much richer, juicier, visual place. Sometimes it is almost unbearable - it is too interesting. And it isn't always just the photos you take that matters. It is looking at the world and seeing things that you never photograph that could be photographs if you had the energy to keep taking pictures every second of your life.

I've never been overwhelmed with a desire to become famous. It's not that I didn't want to have my work appreciated, but for some reason - maybe it's because my father disapproved of almost everything I did - in some secret place in my being was a desire to avoid success.

Seeing is a neglected enterprise.

Being ignored is a great privilege. That is how I think I learned to see what others do not see and to react to situations differently. I simply looked at the world, not really prepared for anything.

I like the Zen artists: they'd do some work, and then they'd stop for a while.

What makes anyone think that I'm any good?

My family was very unhappy about my becoming a photographer - profoundly and deeply unhappy.

My father thought photography was done by lowlifes.

I am not immersed in self-admiration.

I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way.

When I am listening to Vivaldi or Japanese music or making spaghetti at 3 in the morning and realize that I don't have the proper sauce for it, fame is of no use.

I leave these speculations to others. It's quite possible that my work represents a search for beauty in the most prosaic and ordinary places. One doesn't have to be in some faraway dreamland in order to find beauty.