For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.

If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.

The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good as I can to make things even.

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

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.

The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.

I used to have this notion when I was a kid that the minute you said anything, it was no longer true. Of course it would have driven me crazy very rapidly if I hadn't dropped it, but there's something similar in what I'm trying to say. That once it's been done, you want to go someplace else. There's just some sense of straining.