Since I’d opened a studio where I began to practice the debatable art of photography—in order to survive, I told myself—I was invaded by all kinds of people who came to see me as though I were a doctor, in the hope that I’d heal them… 

 The artist [is] that privileged being who [can] free himself of all social constraints—whose only objectives should be the pursuit of liberty and pleasure. 

 All pupils ask the classical question: “How do you become successful and famous?” I’ve talked to thousands of pupils and there’s only one in ten thousand who might make it. It requires time and persistence, and a certain passion, a certain mania. 

 It is the person—regardless of the medium he uses—who makes the work of art into a work of art. 

 I have tried to capture those visions that twilight or too much light, or their own fleetingness, or the slowness of our ocular apparatus rob our senses of. I have always been surprised, often charmed, sometimes literally “enraptured.” (1926) 

 It looked like a snowstorm, with the flakes flying in all directions instead of falling, then suddenly becoming a field of daisies as if the snow had crystallized into flowers. This was followed by another sequence of huge white pins crisscrossing and revolving in an epileptic dance, then again by a lone thumbtack making desperate efforts to leave the screen. There was some grumbling in the audience, punctuated by a whistle or two. Then the film broke, not once, but twice. A cry for the lights arose, the theater lit up disclosing a group locked in a struggle preventing the participants from striking any blows. Small groups in other parts of the theater were seen, divided into two camps, engaged in similar activities. A group of police stationed outside in anticipation of trouble rushed in and succeeded in emptying the theater. (On the first showing of Rayograph film "Return to Reason") 

 Seized in moments of visual detachment during periods of emotional contact, these images are oxidised residues, fixed by light and chemical elements, of living organisms. 

 There is no progress in art, any more than there is in making love.