Redheaded Peckerwood, which unerringly walks the fine line between fiction and nonfiction, is a disturbingly beautiful narrative about unfathomable violence and its place on the land

Like a four-sided porch I'm open to all winds.

I've always assumed it to be an absolute requirement for being a writer: to find all emotions and the sources of all behaviors somewhere within yourself.

Subjectivity is my middle name, a trick memory is my pack mule, and self-contradiction is my trusty old jackknife.

I always give money to a sidewalk con if the story is a good one, even if I don't believe a word of it. Art deserves to get paid.

Unlike a bow and arrow, a camera by its nature ensures that some kind of target will always be hit, if not necessarily the intended target nor in the intended way.

New York has no truck with the past. It expels its dead.

I realize that books are not the entire world, even if they sometimes seem to contain it. But I need the stupid things.

I realised that although I was fascinated with America, its history and culture, I was not interested in becoming American.

I try to take pictures on their own terms, considering the historical and social context from which they emerge.

When I was a child I did engage in an arduous struggle to pass: learning English, getting rid of my accent, becoming conversant with the culture in all its large and small aspects.

in life it is better to be a supporting pillar than a destroying caterpillar

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every living organism to live beyond its income.

My closest relation is myself.

But I couldn't ever make that dream happen. It just came on its own, the way dreams do.

Elmer has the mentality of approximately one peanut.

So far, this is the oldest I've been.

It's important to push yourself further than you think you can go each and every day - as that is what separates the good from the great.

The future's comin' at ya' like a freight train.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally.