There's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way.

Nudists are fond of saying that when you come right down to it everyone is alike, and, again, that when you come right down to it everyone is different.

Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe.

[Our self-image is] that gap between intention and effect

The world is full of fictional characters looking for their stories

There are an awful lot of people in the world and it's going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them... It was my teacher Lisette Model who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it will be.

The discouragement masquerades as the impossibility.