Isn’t every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn’t there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?

The goal is the same: life itself; and the price is the same; life itself.

The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes.

You must be in tune with the times and prepared to break with tradition.

The artist's task is not to alter the world as the eye sees it into a world of aesthetic reality, but to perceive the aesthetic reality within the actual reality. (On photographs by Helen Levitt)

Some people get where they hope to in this world. Most of us don't.

You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice.

I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary' diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive.

A mother never realizes that her children are no longer children.

The camera seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time.

Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption.

when you feel like hope is gone, look inside you and be strong and you'll finally see the truth- that hero lies in you.

The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.

Let go of your past, and look to Mine, where I died for you. Yield to Me, and I will make you a true Knight of the Prince.

I believe that flowers are like people. Flowers come in different colours, shapes and sizes. Some extremely rare and some very common. They are all beautiful in their own unique way.

By the time you're eighty years old you've learned everything. You only have to remember it.

Do you know that the ready concession of minor points is a part of the grace of life?

The minute hand moves faster than you think it does.

There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands.

I'm always writing to a younger version of myself, or a young woman who is like I was. I want that girl to know that I really existed and that it all went down that way.