Cecil Beaton

“I have always been a quarter of an hour ahead of the times.”

“What is elegance? Soap and water!”

“It is exciting to be caught up in a world of people who are not playing it safe.”

“One must be contemporary.”

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

“Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly.”

“Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore.”

“I have a dreadful penchant for writing journals.”

“The camera is a wonderful instrument. It's a pencil of light.”

“I am not a collector of things, but a collector of experiences.”

“The truly fashionable are beyond fashion.”

“All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that.”

“Style is the fingerprint of the soul.”

“One's life is a marathon, not a sprint.”

“I think it is very important to be in love.”