Robert Frank Quotations

Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.

I always say that I don't want to be sentimental, that the photographs shouldn't be sentimental, and yet, I am conscious of my sentimentality.

My photographs are not planned or composed in advance, and I do not anticipate that the onlooker will share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on his mind, something has been accomplished.

I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love.

There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough - there has to be vision, and the two together can make a good photograph.

You do your work as a photographer and everything becomes past. Words are more like thoughts; the photographer's picture is always surrounded by a kind of romantic glamor - no matter what you do, and how you twist it.

It is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.

I'd bet on Ben's ability to see what was coming around the next corner over just about anybody else.

We're looking at a big picture. We need to know what's going on out there - to be able to tell people what's working and not working, and what needs to be under review.

Teams that play games on Saturday, half of them win and half of them lose no matter how much everybody spends. The real finding is there is absolutely not a shred of evidence that if all major college athletic programs were to cut spending by, say, 25 percent or even 50 percent that there would be any reduction in the gains attributed to athletic programs -- financial, alumni donations. All of those gains would proceed on pace.

This is a cost straight to our bottom line. We regret the impact on customers' bills.

It seems to go in cycles. There have periods of history where it was considered bad form to flaunt your wealth but we are not in one of those now. Over the last 30 years, there has been a gradual weakening of the idea that you should not have a house too big because the concept of what is too big has changed.

It's not that attention doesn't matter. But the surprising thing is that it doesn't matter more than it does.

Independent publishing and print-on-demand is the wave of the future, and the future is now. The Lulu process allows me to cut out the middle man (i.e. a separate publisher) and get my work out there the way I want it. My book is much like Lulu itself -- it puts control of your destiny in your own hands.

When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.

The eye should learn to listen before it looks.

Above all, life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference