Elliott Erwitt Quotes

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

Imagination is a form of seeing

The artist has only to trust his eyes.

The true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.

We have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine.

To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.

Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.

Faith is almost the bottom line of creativity; it requires a leap of faith any time we undertake a creative endeavor, whether this is going to the easel, or the page, or onto the stage - or for that matter, in a homelier way, picking out the right fabric for the kitchen curtains, which is also a creative act.

The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.

I look at you and I write down what I hear.

What drives the creative person is that we see it all.

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

It's a question of trying to take down by dictation what's already there. I'm not making something, I'm trying to hear it.

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.

The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

Vision is the true creative rhythm.

I enjoy looking beyond the obvious and look at the stories happening all around me - you kind of formulate things in your mind and get excited about them.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Vision is perhaps our greatest strength... it has kept us alive to the power and continuity of thought through the centuries, it makes us peer into the future and lends shape to the unknown.

All ideas come about through some sort of observation. It sparks an attitude; some object or emotion causes a reaction in the other person.