A Quote by Mary Ellen Mark

Everyone asks me how I get my subjects to open up to me. There’s no formula to it. It’s just a matter of who you are and how you talk to people - of being yourself.
I meet people who can't get healthcare for their families, people who are just distressed over what is happening in our country. So when somebody asks me, "How do you get up?" it really triggered in me the feeling that that's what I want us all to think about each other. How do we get up? How do we pull on our shoes, go out and deal with the problems America faces. That's what I intend to do as president.
With me being in so many pain from when you have a betrayal from your best friend - who was my husband - and the girl got pregnant, I couldn't even get out of bed. The only thing that saved me was my stand-up. I would get on stage and just talk about stuff, and I made people laugh. A lot of women e-mail me and say, 'How do you smile? How do you laugh at something like this?' That's how I do it. I laugh because that's how I get through pain.
Being from the countryside gave me a spine, and it's why I'm so accepting - I don't judge people for how they look or how they talk... I just accept everyone.
It's just a matter of who you are and how you talk to people. Your subjects will trust you only if you're confident about what you're doing. It really bothers me when photographers first approach a subject without a camera, try to establish a personal relationship, and only then get out their cameras. It's deceptive. I think you should just show up with a camera, to make your intentions clear. People will either accept you or they won't.
I want to inspire people and show people no matter what happens, no matter how much you get knocked down, you can pick yourself up. Just keep pushing forward, keep being positive.
I wake up in the morning, put on my face. The one that's going to get me through another day. Doesn't really matter...how I feel inside. This life is like a game sometimes. When you came around me the walls just disappeared. Nothing to surround me and keep me from my fears. I'm unprotected. See how I've opened up? You've made me trust.
I know, for me, dance did inspire me. Not just in how I feel but that confidence of being able to hold myself and come into a room and just feel comfortable with my body and how I stand and how you present yourself and just how you wear clothes, even.
I love my lecture tours. I get up onstage. I have my stack of books and a glass of water and a microphone. No podium, no distance between me and the audience, and I just talk to people and get all excited and tell a lot of jokes, and sing some songs, and read from my work and remind people how powerful they are and how beautiful they are.
When people started reading me and talking to me about the work, they didn't say how funny, or how satiric, or how brilliant, or how this or how that, they said, how'd you get away with it? How'd you get that into print?
So it's not really whether you talk about politics, but how well were you able to do it. Peter Gabriel and Sting get away with it...U2...the examples are there, of people being able to carry these subjects in the music, and the audience is absolutely able to embrace subjects that aren't just the stuff they already know about. And they're actually able to learn stuff.
But being an American woman married to an Arab guy - and a Muslim to boot! - put me in a different category. People would open up, and tell me things that they would never tell another journalist, no matter how persistent.
I don't matter here, Shane. I feel like I just don't matter. Stupid, right?" "No," he said. He sounded so gentle it broke her heart. "It's how most people feel most of the time, Claire. You've grown up being special, and this is how most people live their lives...on their own, unnoticed. And they get used to that feeling. It's just new for you.
I wouldn't say I'm the anchor, I'm the one person who sees everyone at work - I don't get to see a lot of people outside of work too much because I'm there all the time. Everyone asks me "how you doing, have you slept?" so I know I'm working long hours.
I think it doesn't matter, the color of your skin; it doesn't matter where you are from. It matters how you relate to people, how you connect with people, and the open-mindedness with which you approach the subject. That's to me what matters when you are making a film, not who you are or where you are from.
It depends on who's bowling, how is the wicket playing, how I gonna score and stuff like that or how people are trying to get me out, probably that determines how open I am or otherwise how closed I am.
No matter how people mess with you or let you down, or how you let yourself down, a good book means that when you get in bed that night, you have a good hour. I feel like you pay all day for that hour. That's what books mean to me. I can open this two-dimensional , flat white page with squiggly little black marks on them, and someone has created this world that you're going to enter into.
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