Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

I can't say what makes a picture. I can't say. It's mysterious.

The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with art. I am often, in my writing, great leaps ahead of where I am in my thinking, and my thinking has to work its way slowly up to what the "superconscious" has already shown me in a story or poem.

I almost literally wake up in the morning starting to think of my next idea. It's almost always driven by what's in the news. The hard part, really, is getting from knowing what I want to say to figuring out how to say it in an image. I'm still not entirely sure how to explain how that happens... Suddenly, something just works.

It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

My pictures really finish themselves.

I always say that intuition is the number one tool for an artist.

Photography is only intuition, a perpetual interrogation - everything except a stage set.

For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

I never look for a photograph. The photograph finds me and says, I'm here! and I say, Yes, I see you. I hear you.

For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.

You think you photograph a particular scene for the pleasure it gives. In fact it's the scene that wants to be photographed. You're merely an extra in the production.

People go, 'What do you want to do?' What do you want to do? What are you feeling? Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do—that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

I start a picture and I finish it. I don't think about art while I work. I try to think about life.

When I don't have any ideas, I pick up fabric and start working with it and something happens.

I let the song come to me. Then that thing comes to you, and you just know what that thing is. Music isn't like a 9-to-5 job. You never know. It's just the most unpredictable thing.

I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

To me, it's like the difference between a pen and a paintbrush. Music draws from almost the identical place as art does, which really is that intangible - it's like you're pulling from the ether. I don't know where it comes from. Nobody really does. It sort of arrives when it wants to.

I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.

Very rarely is there any confusion as to when a painting or a song is finished. You just know when it's done.

Being a photographer is like listening to music. If you have a camera, by just living your life you're bound to find some things that are worth taking a picture of. You don't have to be an audiophile to have taste in music. It happens through osmosis.

I am kept awake by the list of possibilities for shooting more photos and deciding what I must prioritise next.

I don't go in search of ideas; I try to let them find me.

I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'

Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do - that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.