Annie Leibovitz

“I love photography. And I just eat it up. I feel like I'm an encyclopedia, you know, inside.”

“When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't.”

“I went on tour with the Rolling Stones in 1972 for two or three cities. And in 1975, I was the tour photographer for the Rolling Stones. I hung onto my camera for dear life. Because it scared the hell out of me.”

“If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.”

“Those who want to be serious photographers, you're really going to have to edit your work. You're going to have to understand what you're doing. You're going to have to not just shoot, shoot, shoot. To stop and look at your work is the most important thing you can do.”

“I am impressed with what happens when someone stays in the same place and you took the same picture over and over and it would be different, every single frame.”

“I went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute, thinking I was going to become an art teacher. Within the first six months I was there, I was told that I couldn't be an art teacher unless I became an artist first.”

“As much as I'm not a journalist, I use journalism. And when you photograph a relationship, it's quite wonderful to let something unfold in front of you.”

“There certainly are people who are a pain to work with. I'd be crazy to name them. You can't be indiscreet in this business.”

“Sometimes I enjoy just photographing the surface because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter.”

“The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.”

“No one ever thought Clint Eastwood was funny, but he was.”

“I've learned to create a palette, a vocabulary of ways to take pictures.”

“One of the great things about being an older person is that I am very aware of the scope of the work and the historical sense of it. It's bigger than me.”

“When I take a picture I take 10 percent of what I see.”

“You don't have to sort of enhance reality. There is nothing stranger than truth.”

“As a young person, and I know it's hard to believe that I was shy, but you could take your camera, and it would take you to places: it was like having a friend, like having someone to go out with and look at the world. I would do things with a camera I wouldn't do normally if I was just by myself.”

“I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn't just looking back at you.”

“I don't think I could give advice to my younger self because she probably wouldn't listen.”