Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.

- Diane Arbus

Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in li…

- Diane Arbus

It's important to take bad pictures. It's the bad ones that have to do with what you've never done before. They can make you recognize something you …

- Diane Arbus

I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.

- Diane Arbus

If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.

- Diane Arbus

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.

- Diane Arbus

There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.

- Diane Arbus

I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.

- Diane Arbus

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.

- Diane Arbus