Whitney Otto Quotes

Among the things she said: "Women seem to possess all the natural gifts essential to a good portraitist ... such as personality, patience and intuition. The sitter ought to be the predominating factor in a successful portrait. Men portraitist are apt to forget this; they are inclined to lose the sitter in a maze of technique luxuriating in the cleverness and beauty of their own medium.

…brotherhood of the firstborn, which can be both a blessing and a curse: the overwhelming attention to the detail of their lives and development. The expectations that run too high: being the bridge between adults and children, one foot in either place and the accompanying hollow lonely feeling of being nowhere.

If the photographer isn't going to pay attention to the picture he is making, that if he thinks the camera is just a machine and not an avenue of expression, then he has no business asking anyone for anything, let alone their time and interest. Don't show the world, he said, invent the world.

While she was in transit, being unattached was exhilarating, but the moment she stopped, so did the high.

Think about what binds you to your husband and he to you. Marvel at the strength of that bond, which is both abstract and concrete, spiritual and legal.

All you have to go on is the faith of a kiss.

The worst dream of the night, when you are parted from someone you love and you do not know exactly where he is, but you know that he is in the presence of danger. You are tormented by a desire to keep the one you love safe.

No one knows how another person feels in private.

Later, Jenny would say she seldom knew what she would take a picture of when she picked up a camera, that she only knew once she peered through the viewfinder, as if the photograph had finally found her.

Don’t panic. If you write, you’ll be a writer.

Read "The Story of O." Convince yourself that it was in fact written by a woman or someone who thinks like a woman.

…she eventually forgave him, because she understood him.

The best men tell you the truth because they think you can take it; the worst men either try to preserve you in some innocent state with their false protection, or are ‘brutally honest.’ When someone tells, lets you think for yourself, experience your own emotions, he is treating you as a true equal, a friend…And the best men cook for you.

No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows it’s own weaknesses, the exact placement of the heart. The tragedy is that one can still live with the force of hatred, feel infuriated that once you are born to another, that kinship lasts through life and death, immutable, unchanging, no matter how great the misdeed or betrayal. Blood cannot be denied, and perhaps that’s why we fight tooth and claw, because we cannot—being only human—put asunder what God has joined together.

Why are old lovers able to become friends? Two reasons. They never truly loved each other, or they love each other still.

All this because one race did not have the decency to be ashamed of dealing in human flesh.

The truly terrible thing about this life, was not knowing what you want, but only able to recognize what you do not want. You have to spend so much time and energy trying to find it out, time that other people spent in pursuing of their desires.