I wasn't there [in U.S] when the city was bombed but it seems to have changed my friends.

I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.

My desire is to preserve the sense of people’s lives, to endow them with the strength and beauty I see in them. I want the people in my pictures to stare back.

For me it is not a detachment to take a picture. It's a way of touching somebody - it's a caress… I think that you can actually give people access to their own soul.

I always thought if I photographed anyone or anything enough, I would never lose the person, I would never lose the memory, I would never lose the place. But the pictures show me how much I've lost.

Yes, photography saved my life. Every time I go through something scary, traumatic, I survive by taking pictures.

I knew from a very early age, that what I saw on tv had nothing to do with real life. So I wanted to make a record of real life. That included having a camera with me at all times.

I just get inspired to take a picture by the beauty and vulnerability of my friends.

My work is mostly about memory. It is very important to me that everybody that I have been close to in my life I make photographs of them.

I think the wrong things are kept private

My work shows the beauty in so many different kinds of people because I never photograph anyone who I don't think is beautiful. I never take an intentionally mean picture.

Never interrupt an author when he or she is ‘in the zone’, else you’ll understand the real meaning of ‘writer’s nib’.

I sometimes think that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities- a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

Exactly what good are our eyes if they are not willing to see what's right before us?

When you battle with your conscience and lose, you win.

In my cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n't my business to be "seeking the spirit," but as much its business to be seeking me.

Imagination is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.

DeShaies is like a clock out there. Every other pitch goes one way or the other.

I don't like bungee jumping, but I do like skiing.

Only an idiot would rely on the energy of a bean or a leaf to stay awake throughout the day.