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.

... it came to me that what I had to do was to take pictures and concentrate upon people, only people, all kinds of people, people who paid me and people who didn't.

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.

Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don't realize it.

No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually.

The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.

Photography is a lot like telling a large predatory cat what to do-while an audience of people you can't see watches you.