Lawrence Schiller Quotations

The most important thing you learn as a sports photographer is anticipation - not where the action is taking place, but where it's going to take place. Not where the subject is now, but where they're going to be.

You constantly felt like you wanted to protect her and that you wanted to save her and that's what made her attractive more so to women than even to men. That's why she's still with us. Marilyn Monroe never offended a woman.

Marilyn was a great actress, not a dumb blond bombshell. She was very smart, very astute and a good businesswoman.

A close friend of mine, Annie Leibovitz, who I've known for forty years, photographs celebrities every single day of the week but they all seem to look the same even though she's one of the most creative photographers alive. They all just look the same. Brad Pitt is a great actor but all the pictures of Brad Pitt look the same.

I knew Marilyn over a two-year period. I met her first on a movie called 'Let's Make Love.' I photographed her at that time on and off through the time of her death. I was 22 years old and she was 34 or 35.

When you've experienced the real Marilyn, it's difficult to watch a movie about her.' I didn't want to have the memories of my experience tarnished in any way.

I've had failures, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't beneath me to pick up the phone and introduce myself to Bernard Malamud and say, "I'd like to introduce myself to you and to come meet you. I think I might have something that's worthy of your skills as a writer."

There are major writers who have written books [based on my research]. If one looks carefully at the copyright page, you'll see my name. Writers of the stature of Mailer and even bigger. All over the world.

I saw the end of the general magazine business at the end of the '70s, and I knew I had to move into another profession when the advertising dollar moved from magazines to television. The magazine business as we knew it was over. We were no longer the educators of the world.

I never considered myself a good photographer. I still don't. I thought of myself as a hard worker. My camera was a sponge and I had an instinct that athletes have - anticipation. Photography really represents an enormous amount of anticipation - understanding what might be there the next moment and being prepared for it.

Am I missing something because of my lack of education? Being an intellectual - I'm not. So I hire him as a corner man, like a boxer; he watches me and tells me what I do wrong before I go in for the next round. Barry thought he was going to write what became Executioner's Song, and I told him he wasn't going to. And Barry's closest friend was Joan Didion.

I don't feel lonely. No no no. I feel like I'm jumping in a well that has no bottom, and at some point I know I'll hit bottom. I never put a time limit on it. I'm oblivious to anything except that which I'm doing.