“…when something happens, you have to be extremely swift. Like an animal and a prey — vroom! You grasp it and people don’t notice that you have taken it. Very often in a different situation, you can take one picture. You cannot take two. Take a picture and look like a fool, look like a tourist. But if you take two, three pictures, you got trouble. It’s good training to know how far you can go. When the fruit is ripe, you have to pluck it. Quick! With no indulgence over yourself, but daring. I enjoy very much seeing a good photographer working. There’s an elegance, just like in a bullfight.”
Henri Cartier Bresson, 1971
Quote from the Interview between Henri Cartier Bresson and Sheila Turner-Seed for Scholastic in 1971. Republished in the NYTimes Blog in 2013.