Latest William Eggleston Quotes from Interviews

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• I think with being blind the one thing you would have going is that you could still feel things, see your way around so to speak. And if you had had the experience of seeing at one time in your life, then you would know what it was like and be able to function. I've said this before, I think I could really photograph blind if I had to.

  William Eggleston

  Thinking, Able, Way

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I quite frequently don't look through the camera, which is very close to being blind.

  William Eggleston

  Cameras, Looks, Blind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There are a lot of unseen projects. When a project is finished, I often physically, and in my mind, set it aside, intending something to happen with it, something that does or does not always happen. Now, a lot of these are being resurrected for the public.

  William Eggleston

  Mind, Unseen, Doe

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• There's plenty of film out there, and quadrillions of cameras that use film - I don't think it makes much sense not to use it. The thing that's going out is the manufacturing of the paper. Incidentally, all these years my wife has told me that I'm color-blind.

  William Eggleston

  Thinking, Color, Years

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• Only the few times I've been to so-called treatment centers, which were a complete waste of money and useless. I didn't know what I was doing at the time, because I was always drunk when I checked in.

  William Eggleston

  Drunk, Useless, Waste

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Half voluntarily, half Winston's older brother [William] would take me in, saying, "Daddy, I think you oughta do this." And I'd say, "I think you're right, maybe I do need it." Sometimes a week later I'd leave the place; sometimes I'd stick it out for a month.

  William Eggleston

  Brother, Thinking, Daddy

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• Unfortunately they're practically all dead. And many were my closest associates: friends, co-directors, whatever you want to say - my partners in crime.

  William Eggleston

  Directors, Want, Crime

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• A person can attack that bottle of vodka and drink it like it's a bottle of cold water. Two of my wife's girlfriends died from drinking. They weren't big pill-takers; they were drinkers. So it can't be so simple as to slide away, like Marilyn Monroe.

  William Eggleston

  Girlfriend, Drinking, Simple

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Many people one meets in life somehow think they know you simply because they're hanging out at the same counter-but they really don't know a thing about you.

  William Eggleston

  Thinking, People, Hanging Out

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Generally, that's what happens-a fundamental rotting of the idea. They woke up with the wrong idea. It's just like music: If you don't have an innate love or calling for it, then no matter how much you study or how well you can play by looking at the score, it doesn't mean that you're going to make really good music.

  William Eggleston

  Mean, Play, Ideas

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• I have some that I have become a well-known-even infamous-client of, mostly in Memphis. But a great deal of that is legend and doesn't have anything to do with truth.

  William Eggleston

  Legends, Memphis, Clients

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I don't think that has ever changed. I don't think I see any more or any less than I did years ago. Let's say I have the print of a photo taken in the 1960s and one I took a month ago. I think it's pretty difficult to tell any difference, personally.

  William Eggleston

  Taken, Thinking, Years

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• I've also never had favorite pictures. Or subjects. I have this discipline of treating everything equally-I used to say "democratically."

  William Eggleston

  Discipline, Used, Subjects

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Well, probably the best way to put it might be that at some time, not just in an instant, but over some period of time I became aware of the fact that I wanted to document examples like Kroger or Piggly Wiggly in the late '50s, early '60s.

  William Eggleston

  Example, Might, Way

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• I had the attitude that I would work with this present-day material and do the best I could to describe it with photography, not intending to make any particular comment about whether it was good or bad or whether I liked it or not. It was just there, and I was interested in it. That's what I still do today.

  William Eggleston

  Photography, Attitude, Today

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• It was something new that was happening everywhere. You couldn't miss it. If you needed to go to the grocery you would go to the predecessors of the big supermarkets of today.

  William Eggleston

  Missing, Today, Something New

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• I knew it was happening, but I never paid much attention to it . . . just to the passage of time. Something new always slowly changes right in front of your eyes - it just happens.

  William Eggleston

  Eye, Attention, Something New

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• The immediate reviews were very hostile, but they didn't bother me-I had the attitude that I was right. The poor guys who were critics just didn't understand the works at all. I was sorry about that, but it didn't weigh on my mind a bit.

  William Eggleston

  Sorry, Attitude, Guy

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I would play music every day from the time I was about 4 or 5 years old. Every time I would go from one end of the house to the other, I would pass the piano and play a few notes.

  William Eggleston

  Years, Play, Piano

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• A lot of my friends were mostly working in black-and-white-people like Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and others. We would exchange prints with each other, and they were always very supportive of what I was doing. What each of us was doing photographically was entirely different, but we were basically coming from the same place, sort of like a club.

  William Eggleston

  Black And White, People, Supportive

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• I would go there quite frequently. I met and became close with John Szarkowski of the Museum of Modern Art. He was incredibly supportive about me working in color.

  William Eggleston

  Art, Museums, Color

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• Black-and-white photography, which I was doing in the very early days, was essentially called art photography and usually consisted of landscapes by people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. But photographs by people like Adams didn't interest me.

  William Eggleston

  Photography, Art, Black And White

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• And what we called photojournalism, the photos seen in places like Life magazine, didn't interest me either. They were just not good-there was no art there. The first person who I respected immensely was Henri Cartier-Bresson. I still do.

  William Eggleston

  Art, Magazines, Firsts

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• My friend who I went to boarding school with was interested in photography. He insisted that I buy a camera and marched me downtown.

  William Eggleston

  Photography, School, Cameras

  Interview with Harmony Korine, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 21, 2008.

• I don't like reading music. It's like learning a language. You can't read music proficiently overnight. It takes time, it's boring work.

  William Eggleston

  Reading, Language, Boring

  Source: entertainment.time.com