You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery. You can show things that you like about the universe, things that you hate about the universe. It's capable of doing both.

And now, I feel at 85, I really feel that I'm just ready to start.

I was born to a black childhood of confusion and poverty. The memory of that beginning influences my work today, It is impossible now to photograph a hungry child without remembering the hunger of my old childhood.

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life

People in millenniums ahead will know what we were like in the 1930's and the thing that, the important major things that shaped our history at that time. This is as important for historic reasons as any other.

The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.

I do find a certain fascination with the unpredictable. The transitory years we wade through are what they are- what we make of them.