You know, you have to be an optimist, a pessimist, sarcastic and pleasant all at the same time to be a photographer.

I never think of myself as an artist. I think of myself as making a point.

I have an abiding faith in the fact that time will change the value of photographs. What you see today may be so familiar to everyone that they don't immediately appreciate or value it.

You have to bring to the photograph a prejudice about something, and I'm prejudiced against farmers who tie dead animals on fences. Therefore, I can make a meaningful photograph.

So many people are diverted to doing what people want photographed - fashion models, buildings, mountains - they get to thinking those photographs are good.

Edward [Weston] was the first artist - and I don't use the word lightly - to make a living doing art photography. Other photographers did commercial work, or worked for the government.

I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.

As you tumble to the ground, pick me up on your way down.

When I went to the scientific doctor I realised what a lust there was in him to wreak his so-called science on me and reduce me to the level of a thing. So I said: Good-morning! and left him.

I think any self-respecting educational institution ought to judge its policies by its best estimate of what their long-term consequences for their students and for the society will be.

A symbol from the first, of mastery, experiments such as Hippocrates made and substituted for vague speculation stayed the ravages of plague.

The problem with most intimate relationships is that they are not romantic. They do not involve a deeper knowing, and thus there is diminished possibility of sacred, transformative sharing.

We are not asked to do great things. We are asked to do all things with great care.

School textbooks have almost completely excised any reference to America's true religious heritage.

I wrote when I was a young teen, but I didn't put an eye on the available markets until I was seventeen. The next ten years felt like a self-centered experiment in personal abuse.

I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow.