Papa is like God (as a matter of fact, he might even be God in disguise). He’s just told me, “I’m going to give you your own camera.” Now I will be able to make portraits of everything... everything. (Childhood diary entry, 1901) 

 I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost—that is important. If they are art objects at the same time, that’s fine with me. 

 Photography and writing are marvelous distractions from painting. I might even have found movies more interesting than photography. I tried it a bit, but not enough. 

 My brother Zissou had a vivid intelligence and he invented so many things—wooden horses, crates on wheels, even a velodrome—but I was always the little boy, in a way, kept in the corner, dying to take part. This really grieved me until one day I said to myself, “Now I am going to catch all these beautiful things which they do.” And I invented my piége d'oeil, my eye-trap, which consisted in opening and shutting my eyes rapidly three times. This way I had the impression that I caught all of what was going on: the images, the sounds, the colors. All.