The camera is just a machine, which records with impressive and as a rule very cruel faithfulness.

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)

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?

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.

I was lonely, and a lonely heart has hungers that can overpower both common sense and dignity.

Ty, my boy, here's what you tell them. Say it quietly, and sincerely, and like it's the most important thing anyone ever uttered. Tell them, 'Jesus loves you. But I'm his favorite.

Having authored numerous and pretty versatile write-ups, I can’t say that anything other than my soul, heart and life experience can be called a prominent part of every book I ever wrote

There are two options: adapt or die.

No one ever died from an open mind.

Great performers are, by definition, abnormal; they strive throughout their entire careers to separate themselves from the pack.

Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.

I'm not trying to make friends, I'm trying to make money.

My belief in God is responsible for what I am... How can I refuse to talk about something which is so much a prt of my life both as a man and as a actor?

Gentrification and consumerism... have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen.