Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive.

If you over-plan, you close the door on possibilities.

With the death of Robert Mapplethorpe, I had lost my main collaborator in taking photographs. So I didn't know who to work with.

It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn't want to be photographed. (On living with Robert Mapplethorpe)

One thing I like about getting older is things, your spectrum widens, your capacity for compassion widens.

There were days, rainy gray days, when the streets of Brooklyn were worthy of a photograph, every window the lens of a Leica, the view grainy and immobile. We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed. We lay in each other's arms, still awkward but happy, exchanging breathless kisses into sleep.

The film [Dream of Life] is the way it is because it was the rhythm of my life, and also because the director and the editor are both gifted and both fine human beings.