If you are careful with people, they will offer you part of themselves. That is the big secret.

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

It's the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is.

I realize that I had the best of serious picture journalism.

I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women.

I don't see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.