Witkin Quotes & Sayings

You've got to dig it to dig it, you dig? — Thelonious Monk

I have consecrated my life to changing matter into spirit with the hope of someday seeing it all. — Joel-Peter Witkin

Artists are the people among us who realize creation didn't stop on the sixth day. — Joel-Peter Witkin

If there is pain in my photographs, it relates to the pain in my own existence. — Joel-Peter Witkin

It's always really challenging trying to go from player to player/coach. You have a kind of friendship basis of relationship with all of your teammates, and now you go to this power position where you have to make decisions that might hurt people's feelings. — Abby Wambach

I'd bought a lot of really challenging, cutting-edge Joel-Peter Witkin photographs very early on. There were severed heads and amputated feet and hands in them - gruesome stuff. I had them all around the house, and if someone couldn't relate to it in some artistic way and instead just said "Yuck," then there probably wouldn't have been anywhere for us to go. — Richard Gere

The USA should invade the USA and win the hearts and minds of the population by building roads, bridges and putting locals to work. — Paul Myers

I never photograph anything I don't believe in. If I love working with death, it's because even in death I find this power of reality that no sculptor or painter could recreate, not even a Michelangelo or a Da Vinci. — Joel-Peter Witkin

My work would have the impact of my unreality - my doubts ... — Joel-Peter Witkin

People who hate what I make hate me, too. They must think I am a demon or some kind of evil sorcerer. Those who understand what I do appreciate the determination, love, and courage it takes to find wonder and beauty in people who are considered by society to be damaged, unclean, dysfunctional, or wretched. — Joel-Peter Witkin

I never thought I was particularly talented, and to be honest with you, I still don't. — Willie Aames

Extreme things are like miracles. Nothing is as boring as a person who is just okay. — Joel-Peter Witkin

My purpose is to acknowledge the wonder of being part of Creation. Though I myself don't create anything, I make from what has been created. — Joel-Peter Witkin

I've come to realize that the mark is the primal gesture, the internal connection of the caveman to the cosmos; an impossibility similar to an impulse in an insect's nervous system that it could somehow reduce to dust a steel beam by endlessly crawling over it. — Joel-Peter Witkin

I grew up in Hawaii and I think it was easier because we did not have cliques at high school. — Kelly Preston

[Americans] know instinctively that when they see lines of Americans whose travel plans have been screwed up because they can't get a U.S. passport to travel to Mexico or Canada, when they realize 3 of the Fort Dix plotters were not only illegal aliens but were stopped 75 times (!!!) by various police authorities and never once had their status questioned, the very notion that a Washingtonized-immigration bill is going to "solve the problem" of immigration is hilarious nonsense. — Jeffrey Lord

To me extreme things are like miracles. There is nothing as boring as a person who is just okay. But I could easily live in a world populated with these disjunctive, bizarre things ... I operate out of confusion, towards clarity. — Joel-Peter Witkin

Research shows that happy people look for opportunity while others see only crises. Surrendering fear is healthy! — Judith Orloff

I could easily live in a world populated with disjunctive, bizarre things ... — Joel-Peter Witkin

It's not longer 'Look what I can do, I can do it better then you.' It's just I am. — K'naan

I'm always looking for evidence to support my conjecture that celebrity in Hollywood is sort of like a Joel Peter Witkin photograph: It looks like a big lush banquet table filled with abundance and cornucopias, and then if you look at it closer you see that all the fruit is made of wax and that entree in the middle of the table is actually a dead baby. — Cintra Wilson

I desire to bless and praise the name of God most high for appointing me my birth in a land of Gospel Light where the glorious tidings of a Saviour and of pardon and salvation through Him have been continually sounding in mine ears. — Robert Treat Paine

I've always wanted to be one of those people who didn't really care much about what people thought about them.. but I don't think I am. — Harry Styles

I wanted my photographs to be as powerful as the last thing a person sees or remembers before death. — Joel-Peter Witkin

Fallujah was a Guernica with no Picasso. A city of 300,000 was deprived of water, electricity, and food, emptied of most of its inhabitants who ended up parked in camps. Then came the methodical bombing and recapture of the city block by block. When soldiers occupied the hospital, The New York Times managed to justify this act on grounds that the hospital served as an enemy propaganda center by exaggerating the number of casualties. And by the way, just how many casualties were there? Nobody knows, there is no body count for Iraqis. When estimates are published, even by reputable scientific reviews, they are denounced as exaggerated. Finally, the inhabitants were allowed to return to their devastated city, by way of military checkpoints, and start to sift through the rubble, under the watchful eye of soldiers and biometric controls. — Jean Bricmont

Although God allows the world to use His great wealth in order that their physical and material needs be met, it is not God's will for the devil's children to control all the money that is in the world. — Paul Silway

Caring for someone that doesn't care for you doesn't get you any where, take all the love and care you have for them and give it to someone that actually cares about you, but until you find that person ... invest it in yourself. — Jaz Mehat