As anthropomorphic and surreal people have said my early writing was, to me it was really stock and almost banal in the sense that it was just description, the poetry of comparing: "Your feet are like A, and your eyes like B."

Now if I lived in my land, which I do, if I lived in Iceland, if I lived in Greensland I'd still have Chinese children, but out of my ears my little grey baby hears.

Some people like to say serendipitous. I like to say magical.

I always wanted to move to New York because of the Velvet Underground, because of the picture that they painted of New York City.

Of course, before the internet people found records, too. You can still do it. It's just that people like to make the least amount of effort as possible.

I hate having my photograph taken and I try to keep that in mind when I'm photographing other people. But the best photos that I've taken are the ones when people have forgotten that I'm there. If I'm in a recording studio with a musician, for example, maybe I'm not photographing them in the middle of a take but I can just get that stolen moment of them resting and they glance over to me.

It only takes one profound experience to change somebody's life.