Making that final commitment is really hard. Because once you decide to move forward, it becomes a whole process which is really hard to stop.

My pictures must first be beautiful, but that beauty is not enough. I strive to convey an underlying edge of anxiety, of isolation, of fear.

Every artist has a central story to tell, and the difficulty, the impossible task, is trying to present that story in pictures

It's about finding meaning through light. I'm always interested in tensions. A primary one is the collision between the familiar and the strange.

I really love that dynamic between beauty and sadness...theres always these moments of quiet alienation, the sense of disconnect, but also, these moments of possibility.

I’m interested in using the iconography of nature and the American landscape as surrogates or metaphors for psychological anxiety, fear or desire

What the artist attempts to do is to try and tell a story. Attempting to give physical expression to a story that's internal.

It is really important to have an obsessive need to construct something, to understand something from your own experience.

I think that, in a sense, there's something about photography in general that we could associate with memory, or the past, or childhood.

The suburban landscape is alien and strange and exotic. I photograph it out of longing and desire. My photographs are also about repression and internal angst.

My father was a psycho-analyst and I think that fact was very influential on my development as an artist. Trying to search beneath the surface of things for an unexpected sense of mystery.

There's nothing more exciting than ideas.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar

Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.

My job is to persuade people to toe the line and play within the laws of the game.

When I was coming up the DC Improv was considered the best Improv out there. It's always been high quality stuff coming out of there.

You know who was on time tonight, which surprised me? Ghostface. Ghostface was early and making calls - what rapper does that?

There are two kinds of jokes - funny jokes and Jack Benny jokes.

Having someone else to blame when there is a rude smell in the air.

President Obama is in no danger of being judged by history as an eco-radical.