Elliott Erwitt

When I get up in the morning I brush my teeth and go about my business, and if I am going anywhere interesting I take my camera along.

The advantage of taking pictures of the famous is that they get published.

Professionally I've evolved with what's required, but the pictures I do for pleasure haven't changed, except for the cars in the background, the clothing. I haven't changed at all.

Covering a historic event is perfectly legitimate. It's not sneaking into somebody's boudoir... These people belong to history, and not to record that if you have the opportunity would be wrong.

If your subjects are eternal... they'll survive.

I'll always be an amateur photographer.

I'm not a serious photographer like many of my contemporaries. That is to say, I am serious about not being serious.

I don't really have a favorite camera. I use a Leica and Canon a lot. It depends, especially professionally, on the requirements. But my carry-around camera is a Leica.

You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what's around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy.

Now very often events are set up for photographers... The weddings are orchestrated about the photographers taking the picture, because if it hasn't been photographed it doesn't really exist.

I've been around so long, most editors think I'm dead.

Making books is a very specific kind of activity. It's not really a collection of your best pictures - although it is - but it's also a way of presenting your work so that it's not repetitive, so that it flows, and so that it makes sense in a book.

I like museums in Berlin a lot, especially in the eastern part. They're extraordinarily good.

Most photographers work best alone, myself included.

The thing is that when you don't carry a camera, that's when you see pictures in particular, or at least that's when you think you see pictures in particular. When you do carry it, if you do see one on the occasion that you do, you can take it.

Photography is pretty simple stuff. You just react to what you see, and take many, many pictures.

Be sure to take the lens cap off before photographing.

My 'work' is about seeing not about ideas.

The ratio of successful shots is one in God-knows-how-many. Sometimes you'll get several in one contact sheet, and sometimes it's none for days. But as long as you go on taking pictures, you're likely to get a good one at some point.

All of my marriages lasted seven years.