Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.

I was horny, but I was innocent 'cause I was a real-late bloomer and not particularly attractive. In fact, homely.

Deep in my heart how the presence of you shines, in a light to last a whole life through.

When I was home, traditionally since I was young, I'd write in cafés. That was the romantic notion in 1963. Café atmospheres back then were different. The café life really stemmed from the Parisians' idea of it, with poets struggling over their poems and drinking coffee. No music, no sounds, maybe a little jazz, or soul, but mostly nothing. Now you go into a café and the music is really loud, people are having business meetings, they are on their cellphones. It changes from generation to generation.

I still don't want to be put in the feminist bag. I'm a humanist.

To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it.

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.