“The only time I've ever really felt envy is when I've watched people m...” — Harold Feinstein Quote

The only time I've ever really felt envy is when I've watched people make music, which made my time living in the now-legendary Jazz Loft at 821 Sixth Avenue in New York a constant source of agony and ecstasy!

I was drawn to street photography because there are pictures everywhere there: a woman holding a dog, a baby screaming to be put in a pram, kids playing punch ball, stores with huge barrels of kosher pickles outside. I wanted to photograph life, and here it was.

I was born in Coney Island. I like to think I fell out of the womb onto the fun park's giant Parachute Jump while eating a Nathan's hot dog.

I began photographing in 1946. Before that, I was a painter and drawer, with my mother and father's support. They were a bit pissed when I went into photography. They thought photographers were guys who took pictures at weddings.

You know, my mom, who inspired me to be a novelist, I remember her reading 'The Agony and the Ecstasy,' about Michelangelo, and saying, 'No mother would want that for her child, no matter how great the artist.' I have my share of demons, but I am a gregarious sort.

I wasn't happy with my body and I knew I had to do something to make myself feel better. I was looking at myself in the mirror with agony, and I know a lot of women out there feel the same way.

If you love a character that gets killed, it's agony.

We have been through this is biennial convulsion four or five different times over the past 10 or 12 years, and now it appears that we are going through this quiet agony all over again.