My photographs are not pure: they are a seething wealth of imperfection.

Life itself is not the reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles.

The Art of Vermeer must have been there on the morning of creation.

Ideas and thoughts collide and sort themselves out in these fruitful collisions.

Art is not arbitrary. A fine painting is not there by accident; it is not arrived at by chance. We are sensitive to tonalities.

The smallest modification of tonality affects structure. Some things have to be rather large, but elegance is the presentation of things in their minimum dimensions.

The coherent way of investigating any field is to examine its possible relatedness to other things.

We work for that part of our vision which is uncompleted.

The field of action of a photograph should be that chessboard of the heart and mind upon which poetry and art have always operated

Choice and chance structure art and nature.

Art accepts what it finds.

By the 1960s the United States had a new ruling class—the teenager!

At that moment I knew without a doubt that God himself was speaking to me. He cared. He was there. He came to help even when I could not call out loud or explain my fear in words.

Raising people is not some lark. It's serious work with serious repercussions. It's air-traffic control. You can't step out for a minute

Learn to drink the cup of life as it comes.

A free man is as jealous of his responsibilities as he is of his liberties.

They say "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." In the Marine Corps, you can make that horse wish to hell he had.

I really like to work with theater actors. Theater actors tend to do lots of independent movies, and those are the actors that I like.

Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower.

I would like to write my next book about what happened to critical intelligence in America and how it's been undermined by these really shallow ideas about human life and nature.

You can't go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary, and really understand it, and come out a liberal.