A Quote by Teju Cole

When I've had enough of words, I go out into the city for a long walk; sometimes I'll go out walking for several miles. And I'll just take photographs and hope for something striking or unusual to happen that I can organize into a picture frame.
I go out to take a walk, I see something, I take a picture. I take photographs. I have avoided profound explanations of what I do.
I usually walk six miles a day.I take my cellphone and I go out on the bike path and I just walk and work.
Sometimes you want to go for a walk and you don't want to be watched. You just want to be anonymous and blend in. Especially when I travel, I feel that way, because I can't really go out and see a city the way other people can and I miss out on a lot.
Timidity has no place in a major action movie. You have to know how to take your moments. Sometimes walking out the door is just walking out the door. But when it's your moment, you have to go for it.
As long as you're just smart enough to do a job and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you're gonna be alright. But if you go beyond that then you're gonna have these grave doubts that give you stomach problems, headachesmake you want to go out and do something else. So, I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming out.
I don't seek to be in the tabloids but I suppose sometimes I go out and I'm wearing something and they take a picture and it's in.
When the Beatles first came out, you had to go to a certain amount of trouble to have long hair. You just couldn't have it immediately. Anything you can just go out and get - like platform shoes - is not going to inspire people as much as something they have to go through a little bit of hell to have.
I think about photographs as being full, or empty. You picture something in a frame and it's got lots of accounting going on in it-stones and buildings and trees and air - but that's not what fills up a frame. You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there.
The talking shows allow me to come out of my cave and that's why those shows go on for so long. I hate walking off stage. Sometimes I walk off and I miss them as I'm walking off the stage. I wonder if they'll let me go another hour. That's why I do it: to communicate, to get points across.
There was as big a reaction after the revelations about Assad's chemical weapons. Nevertheless, that photograph did strike a singular chord. Which leads us to a larger fact: we don't understand why certain photographs create such an upheaval in one's soul. You look at them and go, "Oh my gosh." And that doesn't happen with television. It's unique to photography. Photographs are unique in that they are a frame abstracted out of reality, out of, in this case, a civil war. A single event can carry so much weight. And that is extraordinary.
Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people? We draw out from other people our own thought. If, when you go out to organize, you go with a broad spirit, you will create and call out breadth and toleration. You had better organize one woman on a broad platform than 10,000 on a narrow platform of intolerance and bigotry.
I'm a filmmaker, so I always think: When is the breaking point? Sometimes you've got to go beyond the breaking point, and then you catch it. When is long enough? It's one of those things you have to look at, walk away, and go home and find out what it is.
Sometimes the most interesting visual phenomena occur when you least expect it. Other times, you think youre getting something amazing and the photographs turn out to be boring and predictable. So I think thats why, a long time ago, I consciously tried to let go of artists angst, and instead just hope for the best and enjoy it. I love the journey as much as the destination. If I wasnt a photographer, Id still be a traveler.
A guy can do a stair-stepper for an hour or go out and run five miles, but there's a big difference between doing that and going out into the ring and being ready to go-go-go-go-go!
I went to high school in Indianapolis I learned how to walk around looking tough because everybody had to do that. I go out there occasionally and they're still doing it, walking around looking very tough because something might happen.
Now I kind of have to watch where I go. I can't just wear whatever when I go out because somebody might want to take a picture. People are, like, taking pictures of me in my car when I'm driving. It's crazy. I kind of hate it sometimes.
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