Brandon Stanton

“I know I have a caption that I'm going to use when somebody tells me something I've never heard before. It's very rarely a thought, a philosophy, when somebody says, 'Oh, I don't like cheese' or 'Oh, I think the government should be overthrown,' because so many people share these thoughts. But what people don't share is stories.”

“It's such a different spectrum of tragedies when you talk to people in developing countries.”

“Somebody's willingness to let me photograph them, and willingness to tell me a story, has nothing to do with the words I say. It all has to do with the energy I'm giving off, which hopefully is very genuine, very interested energy. It's just two people having a conversation in the street. I think that's where genuine content comes from.”

“Being a doctor, lawyer in war-torn countries isn't easy when the infrastructure isn't there. The money, the food and education is not always accessible to achieve those dreams.”

“The only things I make money on are speeches and books.”

“I've taken pictures in at least 14 countries, and nowhere have people told me 'no' more than New York City.”

“She had the most beautiful awkwardness”

“Wherever I go, I just try to show normal life. If the work helps to dispel stereotypes, it's because I seek not to portray the extremities of a place, but the vast majority of people who are quite normal and are having normal life experiences.”

“I'm a believer in the ordinary person, that the ordinary person is just as important and has an equally unique perspective on the world as someone who is famous or perhaps more privileged.”

“It's a very immersive and intense form of travel to walk around with an interpreter and stop random people on the street and ask them about their lives.”

“When I first started 'Humans of New York,' I was writing short stories. There were about 50 of them. And, you know, they were a great part of the site, but the photography just started growing so fast that I didn't have time to make them anymore.”

“If I had sat around and waited until I had an idea to be a successful photographer, I would still be in finance.”

“I'm not even really attempting to brand myself outside of 'Humans of New York.' I think part of the reason for my success is that I've put my ego aside and said I'm not going to put all of my effort into trying to promote myself. I'm going to try to promote my work and am going to try to promote my project.”

“'Humans of New York' wasn't the result of a fully finished idea that I thought of and then executed; it was an evolution. There were hundreds of tiny evolutions that came from me loving photography.”

“In some neighborhoods, faces mature faster than bodies.”

“I think that even though some of the things on 'Humans of New York' are kind of very personal and very revealing, I think the discomfort with sharing that tends to be overwritten by the appreciation of being able to distill the experience of your life into a story and share it with other people.”

“Whenever you get a large body of work like 'Humans of New York,' a natural pathway becomes to put it between two covers. I wanted this to be a very nice keepsake. A lot of work went into it, and a lot of fans are attached to it.”

“It seems that everywhere I go, people want the same things - security, education, family. It's just that so many people have no avenues through which to obtain these things.”

“'Humans of New York' is basically somebody walking up to absolute strangers on the street every day and, within minutes, talking with them about very personal things. Some things they haven't even told their best friends or family members.”

“Everybody asks, 'What does 'Humans of New York' mean?' and I always say that I try to avoid putting any kind of message in the work even if it is a positive or optimistic message. The moment you do that, you're looking for certain people and words that fit into the world view you are trying to show, and it becomes preachy.”