I take more to the subject than to my ideas about it. I am not interested in any idea I have had, the subject is so demanding and so important.

The camera is not merely a reflecting pool and the photographs are not exactly the mirror, mirror on the wall that speaks with a twisted tongue.

[Garry Winogrand] was a bull of a man and the world his china shop.

Anything that looks like an idea is probably just something that has accumulated, like dust. It looks like I have ideas because I do books that are all on the same subject. That is just because the pictures have piled up on that subject. Finally I realize that I am really interested in it. The pictures make me realize that I am interested in something.

... a mysterious intersection of chance and attention that goes well beyond the existential surrealism of the 'decisive moment'.

The world makes up my pictures, not me.

I only wanted Uncle Vernon standing by his own car (a Hudson) on a clear day, I got him and the car. Ialso got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on the fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.