Sergio Leone Quotes

Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.

I like being behind the camera because I can control perception and what people see.

The impact of the Vietnam War on TV made everyone recognize the importance of visual media.

I am someone who takes pleasure in exploring the full scale of the medium photography. I am a photographer.

We learn so much about the world by what we take in through movies and TV and books - we learn who's worthy of having their story told.

I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera. I look into the camera and take pictures. My photographs are the tiniest part of what I see that could be photographed. They are fragments of endless possibilities.

I really enjoy behind the camera stuff and I'm a frustrated photographer myself and just love the camera. I love that side of it and that part of the filmmaking world and I enjoy developing things. It's an area that I'll continue to be more active in as time goes by.

There was a camera club at Columbia, where I was taking a painting course. And when I went down, somebody showed me how to use the stuff. That's all. I haven't done anything else since then, It was as simple as that. I fell into the business.

Sometimes I have taken photographs and just felt so excited that I could barely hold the camera steady, and the photo was boring.

We grew up with a camera in front of us.

The camera's a ballpoint pen, an imbecile; it's not worth anything if you don't have anything to say.

The so-called positive press has in some ways been more difficult to swallow than the negative.

I just use [the camera]. I just pick it up like an axe when I've got to chop down a tree. I pick up a camera and go out and shoot the pictures I have to shoot.

It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium.

I am a man of very many anxieties but doing strange things with the camera is not one of them.

The camera cannot, but the photographer can.

I know what to do with the camera because I see the giant in the camera when I'm operating it live on the set.

I read the other day that Minor White said it takes twenty years to become a photographer. I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. I would say, judging from myself, that it takes at least eight or nine years. But it does not take any longer than it takes to learn to play the piano or the violin. If it takes twenty years, you might as well forget about it!

They ... asked me: 'How do you make your pictures?' I was puzzled ... I said, I don't know, it's not important.

Who controls the images? Ultimately, we don't control the images. This is the minimum we're allowed to ask for: we don't get to control most of the media. We fight to have some say in the ways we're represented. At the bare minimum, don't insult us in person. That's all we ask! Let us at least be able to function freely in the world.

I have a feeling that demonstrations don't accomplish anything. That they become fads. I also feel that demonstrations wouldn't go on unless there is a TV camera. That part of it all is performance for the media. I didn't know whether they are completely honest.

If the guy behind the camera is not good, the pictures are bad. It's still you, and it's the same lines and everything, but it doesn't work.

I used to believe that we could change the media. I was as naive as anybody.

Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant.

I want my photographs not only to be real but to portray the essence of my subjects also. In order to do that, you have to be patient.