I don't watch TV, so I feel like I'm left out of the American fabric or something.

Good art should elicit a response of 'Huh? Wow!' as opposed to ‘Wow! Huh?'

I'm interested in glorifying something that we in the world would say doesn't deserve being glorified. Something that's forgotten, focused on as though it were some sort of sacred object.

When I first did the book on gasoline stations, people would look at it and say, Are you kidding or what? Why are you doing this? In a sense, that's what I was after: I was after the head-scratching.

I just use [the camera]. I just pick it up like an axe when I've got to chop down a tree. I pick up a camera and go out and shoot the pictures I have to shoot.

Traveling is irritating to me, but not driving. Going to the airport makes me nervous, but when I set out to just take a leisurely drive, it's blue skies and puffy clouds and time.

People refuse to believe that I've never been to Starbucks or Disneyland.

All my artistic response comes from American things, and I guess I've always had a weakness for heroic imagery.

My pictures are not that interesting, nor the subject matter. They are simply a collection of facts; my book is more like a collection of Ready-mades.

I wasn't captivated by the romance of Paris or London. I love visiting, but I'd rather be in L.A.

Perhaps there would be more anxiety in my work if I lived in New York.

And the great question for mankind is what is to be loved or hated next, whenever and old love or fear has lost its hold.

With no one to share suchbeauty the attraction fades.

The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. Thought finds its way into action.

Laughter is a celebration of our failings. That's what clowns are for. And that's what I am.

Zen is the study of mind in all of its manifestations. The purpose of Zen is to be happy.

To me, Hillary [Clinton] looks alright. She looks like the kind of woman I admire. She doesn't seem to have distorted her essential nature.

Never try to understand the students. They hate it. They would much rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, stew in their own —” “That’s enough, Phineas,” said Dumbledore.

To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.

Be true to yourself, and stick with who you are through thick and thin without letting anyone dilute your essence.

I work for a big newspaper, and I guess I'm an insider. I don't have the luxury of calling myself a foreign correspondent and just swooping in and then leaving.