Explore Quotes by Robert Mapplethorpe

I wish I could be elegant.

I'm not a photojournalist.

The photographs that are art have to be separated from the rest - then preserved.

Sell the public flowers... things that they can hang on their walls without being uptight.

I don't know why my pictures come out looking so good. I just don't get it.

When I’m behind a camera I forget I exist.

I like to look at pictures, all kinds. And all those things you absorb come out subconsciously one way or another. You'll be taking photographs and suddenly know that you have resources from having looked at a lot of them before. There is no way you can avoid this. But this kind of subconscious influence is good, and it certainly can work for one. In fact, the more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.

This AIDS stuff is pretty scary. I hope I don't get it.

Whenever you make love to someone, there should be three people involved - you, the other person, and the devil.

When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I'm human. It's the same thing when I'm behind a camera. I forget I exist.

I would never have done what I'd done if I'd considered my father as somebody I wanted to please.

My work is about seeing - seeing things like they haven't been seen before.

To make pictures big is to make them more powerful.

I played around with the flowers and the lighting, so that was a good way to educate myself

I see things like they've never been seen before. Art is an accurate statement of the time in which it is made.

I should try to get some sleep as one doesn't know what tomorrow may bring.

I just want to be written about as a normal artist.

I've never lied. I think I've lived a moral life.

Just because I was out at the bars all the time didn't mean I wasn't looking for someone to love.

My lifestyle is bizarre, but the only thing you need to know is where the darkroom is.

I became the toast of London. A lot of people I met came from these really decadent families where the married men were gay and no one thought anything about it.