A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.

My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.

Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.

Essentially what photography is is life lit up.

We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make.

Life rarely presents fully finished photographs. An image evolves, often from a single strand of visual interest - a distant horizon, a moment of light, a held expression.

Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.

For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.

I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.

Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.

Religion is boring and alien to me and relates no more than a chimera to what is to me the reality of the spirit.

To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?

There's nothing an artist needs more - even more than excellent tools and stamina - than a deadline.

All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.

Those who trade with heaven by prayer grow rich by quick returns.

We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein.

Word-carpentry is like any other kind of carpentry: you must join your sentences smoothly.

I'm not good at watching myself which I think is perfectly natural. I don't give myself a hard time about it. I am the worst critic.

Songs are about just being totally honest and putting those words to music.

The aim of education should be to preserve and nurture the yearning for learning that a child is born with.