I was extravagant in the matter of cameras - anything photographic - I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest - or without.

A lifetime can well be spent correcting and improving one's own faults without bothering about others.

Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk.

Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.

The photographer's most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically — that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make.

People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.