Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.

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.

Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.

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.

The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.

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

Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon... We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er.