I am obsessed with beauty. I want everything to be perfect, and of course it isn't. And that's a tough place to be because you're never satisfied.

Boston: Bulfinch Press 1990. Mapplethorpe's first studio was at 24 Bond Street in Manhattan. 2nd ed.

The frank homoeroticism of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks.