Ralph Steadman Quotes

In the best of all possible worlds, directors would obsess about the quality of their storytelling, and not the details of their technical methods.

I want to reach that condensation of sensations that constitutes a picture.

My idea with my work is always to fashion something that's impossible to transpose into any other media.

When I make a new movie, I always get stuck with, "That's not an Oliver Stone film." But I don't know what to do about that except just move on.

It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams.

I paint what I think, not what I see.

Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.

I'd always wanted to tell people that when I work on my body I'm thinking about classical sculpture, so I jumped at the chance to show off body building as an art form.

Once, a French journalist told me that all my films are the same. I said, 'Excuse me? I work hard to make them different.' What she meant was that in my films there is a character that faces insurmountable odds, and they overcome them. But I thought that might be true, but you need certain factors for drama, and you need to overcome them.

It's a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a poet.

It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel.

Image quality is not the product of a machine, but of the person who directs the machine, and there are no limits to imagination and expression.

An artist should have more than two eyes.

I must always have a clear image of the form of a work before I begin. Otherwise there is no impulse to create.

The difference between a good picture and a mediocre picture is a question of millimeters - small, small differences - but it’s essential. I didn’t think there is such a big difference between photographers. Very little difference. But it is that little difference that counts, maybe

Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.

I just made pictures I would've liked to see.

I was just reading some poetry, and it talked about how things start as one thing and change into another, and I just thought, what a great concept for a song.

Photography is a transformation, not a reproduction.

To me, writing is about how we see. The writers I want to read teach me how to see-see the world differently. In my writing there is no separation between how I observe the world and how I write the world. We write through our eyes. We write through our body. We write out of what we know.

I would photograph an idea rather than an object, a dream rather than an idea.

Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience.

In music I still prefer the minor key, and in printing I like the light coming from the dark. I like pictures that surmount the darkness, and many of my photographs are that way. It is the way I see photographically. For practical reasons, I think it looks better in print too.

If the photographer is not a discoverer, then he is not an artist.

Emphasis on technique is justified only so far as it will simplify and clarify the statement of the photographer's concept.