Robert Mapplethorpe Quotes

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

The fact is that creativity is everywhere. It's just about the way that you look at things.

It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.

I think the artistry is in having an insight into what one sees around them. Generally putting things together in a way no one else has before and finding a way to express that to other people who don't have that insight.

Knowing how to look is a way of inventing.

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.

This thing called the camera, that takes everything in equally, taught me a lot about how to see.

I think the more realistic you try to make the graphics and the experience, the more you limit yourself to a single vision.

It is the function of creative man to perceive and to connect the seemingly unconnected.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

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

My pictures are my eyes. I photograph what I see - and what I want to see.

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

Vision is the true creative rhythm.

I just want to be able to be creative.

Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

I am not interested in shooting new things - I am interested to see things new.

Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.

A lot of people forget how important it is to be creative. We get caught up in getting ahead and in day-to-day minutiae. But creativity is a fundamental mode of expression, as is being tenacious and standing by your own convictions and passions, even if it's not the 'popular' choice.

I see things with my own eyes, just as if they were the first eyes that ever saw, and then I set about to tell, as best I can, just what I've seen.

I think you should experience life before you can recreate it.

You can't buy vision, and you can't buy aesthetic.

A man's life is colored by the dye of his imagination.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.