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

The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.

I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.

What moves me about...what's called technique...is that it comes from some mysterious deep place. I mean it can have something to do with the paper and the developer and all that stuff, but it comes mostly from some very deep choices somebody has made that take a long time and keep haunting them.

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

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