When you take a picture you haven't a clue that it is going to be what it is. Maybe you have a clue but you don't really know. There are too many possibilities. Part of the game is how many balls you can juggle. It is to me. When you are 12 you can juggle two. Maybe when you are 50 you can juggle five. That is an interesting concept to me: how much I can put in and still make it pull together?

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

... photographs are so loaded with information. They're remarkable. As I said, you get both the tree and the forest.

If one really knew what one was doing, why do it? It seems to me if you had the answer why ask the question? The thing is there are so many questions.

The world makes up my pictures, not me.

The idea that the snapshot would be thought of as a cult or movement is very tiresome to me and, I'm sure, confusing to others. It's a swell word I've always liked. It probably came about because it describes a basic fact of photography. In a snap, or small portion of time, all that the camera can consume in breadth and bite and light is rendered in astonishing detail: all the leaves on a tree, as well as the tree itself and all its surroundings.

With a camera like that you don't believe you're in the masterpiece business. It's enough to be able to peck at the world.