[My] goal as an artist is to create increasingly complex images with greater and greater clarity of form and intensity of vision.

Nothing is staged. And nothing is already there. Everything is transformed through the camera.

It is my belief that the most challenging photographs are those that create a tension between what we refer to as the real and the imaginative.

In the end, I believe that the most important influence on my aesthetic has been the photographs I have taken.

I never prepare a speech. I never think when I give a speech, except for "don't embarrass yourself or others," meaning "remember the names of the people you have to thank."

I never think about a photo before I start it. I try to let my mind relax, and then when I get there I do it.

My best Pictures are the ones I don’t understand.

When you go searching, you never know what you will find.

If an artist is one who spends his life trying to define his being, I guess I would have to call myself an artist.

When the early Europeans first met Africans, at the crossroads of history, it was a respectful meeting and the Africans were not slaves. Their nations were old before Europe was born.

I am the triple owner of the world, the finest Turkey, the Lorelei, Germania and Helvetia of exclusively sweet butter and Naples, and I must supply the whole world with macaroni.

Probably one of the reasons I don't work in the mainstream anymore is that I'm only interested in making the stuff I want to make

To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other yardstick.

I know if I stopped hosting 'Wine Library TV,' we'd probably lose 75 percent of our audience, but the remaining 25 percent is still a big number.

A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take.

[T]o argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt.

By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.

First, we did rank everybody by risk, and New York comes out number one.

I would rather be tough on myself than have other people be tough on me.