I trust my instincts. I don't distrust them. They haven't led me astray. It's when I've made up my mind to be efficient that is when I have gone wrong.

To know ahead of time what you're looking for means you're then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.

I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were--their pride, their strength, their spirit.

I've never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning - but some phase of photographer I've always been.

No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually ... I know what we could make of it if people only thought we could dare look at ourselves.