I mean, Rick James was just a man-made image, the image I created. Just trying to live Rick James almost killed me.
One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.
All names of good and evil are images; they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who seeks knowledge from them.
When it comes to the British monarchy, I prefer to be seduced by an image than presented with a real person. It's kind of a Warhol thing.
The image is one thing and the human being is another. It's very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.
People ask me questions like, "Oh, you look so theatrical in your photographs. Is that what you're like when you walk down the street?" It's like, "Of course not." It's such a silly question - it's like being theatrical is a crime.
I made some good pictures, and I made some bad ones. I wasn't trying to build an image, though; I was trying to build a life for myself.
Most American heroes of the Revolutionary period are by now two men, the actual man and the romantic image. Some are even three men - the actual man, the image, and the debunked remains.
Just because you're on the Disney Channel and you always have a smile on your face, they think you're perfect, and it's obvious that nobody's life really is.
My father was never really the con-man type that the film shows him to be: he was straight as an arrow, though he did have problems with the IRS.
I know I have this image but in reality, if you take all my records, I had to use five or six [tracks].
I am a character, so that's the problem. There are many, many levels to how I behave. Some people might associate being Marilyn Manson as having lipstick on, but I don't really have some sort of other lifestyle.
I used to think that the image of the press in the 1940s - a bunch of guys in hats screaming on the courthouse steps - was all baloney. I used to say, 'I know reporters. We're not like that.' But we are.
The game of basketball is one thing, but the image of the game is another thing.
I don't understand why people take Beyonce so seriously. You don't feel like there's a living, breathing person. It's not flesh and blood. It's just flesh and flesh.
I'm really much more like Phil Potter from [the 1979 film] Starting Over. People do think I'm the Bandit [from Smokey and the Bandit ], and I'm a lot more serious than that.
Most people can differentiate between the guy you see on TV and the real-life guy.
America is a country that has been skating for ages on its unparalleled ability to look marvelous on the outside.
I'm not really rebellious. People think I am, but I'm not.
When I see my picture in the papers, I imagine that people think I'm a lot more serious than I am. They probably think I'm pretty miserable.
My image is a media-built image. I'm not what my image is.
Image overshadows reality in our league, and there are people who get to believe they are better than they really are.
The response is to the image, not to the man, since 99 percent of the voters have no contact with the man.
If I photograph you I don't have you, I have a photograph of you. It's got its own thing. That's really what photography, still photography, is about.
Pleasure resorts are like film stars and royalty... embarrassed by the figures they cut in the fantasies of people who have never met them.
