Astrid Kirchherr

“And I was very, very much influenced by the films of Jean Cocteau and by Sartre and everything that came out of France because it was closer than America or England.”

“Black and white means photography to me. It's much easier to take a good color photograph, but you can get more drama into a black and white one.”

“I didn't take that many pictures of The Beatles, but I did photograph them before anybody else knew about them, and that makes me proud. I saw something in them.”

“When Stuart passed away, I was so young and so selfish about living and having fun.”

“It is a serious job being a portrait photographer, which is how I saw myself.”

“After Stu, I liked John and George. Then I like Pete Best. Paul I found hard to get close to.”

“Well, the first time I met The Beatles was through my former boyfriend, Klaus Voormann, who saw them one night when he was wandering around Hamburg and then he heard this beautiful sound of rock 'n' roll music.”

“From the first time I saw them, I knew they weren't just five dirty little boys from Liverpool without an education.”

“We knew of Sartre and we dressed like the French existentialists. Our philosophy then, and remember we were only little kids, was more in following their looks than their thoughts. We were going around looking moody.”

“All my friends in art school used to run around with this sort of what you call Beatles haircut. And my boyfriend then, Klaus Voormann, had this hairstyle, and Stuart liked it very, very much. He was the first one who really got the nerve to get the Brylcreem out of his hair and asking me to cut his hair for him.”

“Well when you're young, you're just in love and every day is so new and so fresh and so beautiful. You just don't think of the future.”

“John's legacy? His bravery. When he had the power, he used it. He really wanted peace on Earth, and John's lyrics, well, that's the brave poetry of the '60s. If he had stayed with us, he could have done so much more.”

“I've hardly taken a photograph since 1967.”

“They are my friends. If they are the Beatles or the kings of China, it doesn't matter lo me.”

“You expressed yourself by looking different from other people. We even looked different from each other. But among the Exis, there was a close group of us, Klaus Voormann, Jurgen Wollmer and me. Klaus and I always wore black.”

“For me, the music of the Beatles then was serious and very, very serious art. So I couldn't take a picture of John laughing his head off or pulling funny faces because he was a serious artist, even when he was only 20.”

“For me, they are still my dear friends, not the Beatles.”

“I just had the joy of taking pictures, and I never cared about my negatives. I just gave them away whenever anybody asked for them.”

“I'm not a businesswoman... I never looked after my negatives and you need that to prove you took the photographs.”

“I'm a very, very silly girl.”