A Quote by Diane Arbus

The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it's true. I would never choose a subject for what it means to me or what I think about it. You've just got to choose a subject - and what you feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold if you just plain choose a subject and do it enough.

Diane Arbus

Quote Topics

About Begins Boredom Chinese Choose Enough Fascination Feel Got Just Me Means Never Pass Plain Subject Theory Think Through True Unfold Would

Quote Author

Diane Arbus
American - Photographer
March 14, 1923 - July 26, 1971

...I would never choose a subject for what it means to me. I choose a subject and then what I feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold.

Diane Arbus

I think you reveal yourself by what you choose to photograph, but I prefer photographs that tell more about the subject. There's nothing much interesting to tell about me; what's interesting is the person I'm photographing, and that's what I try to show. [...] I think each photographer has a point of view and a way of looking at the world... that has to do with your subject matter and how you choose to present it. What's interesting is letting people tell you about themselves in the picture.

Mary Ellen Mark

While driving to work, I'll choose to think about a particular subject rather than just have random thought streams landing on one subject or another. For example, I might think about the structure of an opinion. Or I might think about the first sentence of an opinion, refining it.

Raymond Kethledge

It's not a very popular subject amongst my audience, who are by nature more internationalist, but I don't choose what to write about, I don't choose my subjects, they kind of choose me.

Billy Bragg

I never had to choose a subject - my subject rather chose me.

Ernest Hemingway

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

Robert M. Sapolsky

The subject matter that I am really spending my time on has become an acceptable subject matter. Living, lifestyle, family, is now in the forefront of interest in America, and I've just stuck with it. I mean, I've been doing this for years, and I never got angry. I never said, you know, listen, I'm fighting for this subject. That wasn't my point. My point was to continue working in a subject matter, knowing full well that finally it would be recognized as a viable subject once again.

Martha Stewart

I feel like the reason I ended up becoming a playwright is because I never choose the right word. As a kid, my fantasy profession was to be a novelist. But the thing about writing prose - and maybe great prose writers don't feel this way - but I always felt it was about choosing words. I was always like, "I have to choose the perfect word." And then it would kill me, and I would choose the wrong word or I would choose too many perfect words - I wrote really purple prose.

Annie Baker

This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.

Terry Pratchett

I choose to be American, I choose to live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I choose to have Puerto Rican/Jewish neighbors, and I choose to maintain my Chinese identity.

Eddie Huang

Every three or four years I pick a new subject. It may be Japanese art; it may be economics. Three years of study are by no means enough to master a subject but they are enough to understand it. SO for more than 60 years I have kept studying one subject at a time.

Peter Drucker

Batty as it sounds, subject and style may choose artists, through some unfathomable cosmic means. How else to explain that even artists who enjoy what they do can be perplexed or even horrified that they're doing it?

Jerry Saltz

When you choose to be a competitor you choose to be a survivor. When you choose to compete, you make the conscious decision to find out what your real limits are, not just what you think they are.

Pat Summitt

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.

David Foster Wallace

Don't choose. If you choose, you will be in the quagmire. Don't choose! A choiceless awareness is the goal. Just remain aloof; don't choose. The moment you choose, you have fallen into the trap of the world, or into the trap of the mind.