Enthusiasm is the electricity of life

I think maybe the rural influence in my life helped me in a sense, of knowing how to get close to people and talk to them and get my work done.

I have never known anyone important enough to consume me in anger beyond a few hours. Better to depart their existence before they poison your own.

At first I wasn't sure that I had the talent, but I did know I had a fear of failure, and that fear compelled me to fight off anything that might abet it.

And I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty, to show something beautiful for somebody as well.

You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.

So I went to Chicago in 1940, I think, '41, and the photographs that I made there, aside from fashion, were things that I was trying to express in a social conscious way.