I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.

I'm very little drawn to photographing people that are known or even subjects that are known. They fascinate me when I've barely heard of them.

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

If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life. I mean people are going to say, You're crazy. Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid.

The world is full of fictional characters looking for their stories

The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it's true. I would never choose a subject for what it means to me or what I think about it. You've just got to choose a subject - and what you feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold if you just plain choose a subject and do it enough.

I mean, it's very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.