My idea of gardening is to discover something wild in my wood and weed around it with the utmost care until it has a chance to grow and spread.

If anyone gets in my way when I'm making a picture, I become irrational. I'm never sure what I am going to do, or sometimes even aware of what I do-only that I want that picture.

The very secret of life for me, I believed, was to maintain in the midst of rushing events an inner tranquility.

Nothing attracts me like a closed door. I cannot let my camera rest until I have pried it open.

A book, while it is being written, has an intense life of its own which you share.

It seems to me that while it is very important to get a striking picture of a line of smoke stacks or a row of dynamos, it is becoming more and more important to reflect that life that goes on behind these photographs. (1935)

Photography is a very subtle thing. You must let the camera take you by the hand, as it were, and lead you into your subject.