The words that come direct from the people are the greatest.If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes.

The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.

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.

When you are doing a lot of hard fast field work, it's a physical necessity to forget every day. You can't try to remember it in any continuity. You get so burdened if you try to do it the other way. You can't dictate to your material... We found our way in, slid in on the edges. We used our hunches. And it was hard, hard living.

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.

Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.

I realize more and more what it takes to be a really good photographer. You go in over your head, not just up to your neck.