And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible.

My parents put the New Yorker in my crib. I saw Vogue and Vanity Fair around the house before I could read.

If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy.

I hate cameras. They interfere, they’re always in the way. I wish: if I could just work with my eyes alone. To get a satisfactory print, one that contains all that you intended, is very often more difficult and dangerous than the sitting itself. When I’m photographing, I immediately know when I’ve got the image I really want. But to get the image out of the camera and into the open, is another matter.

It's in trying to direct the traffic between Artiface [sic] and Candor, without being run over, that I'm confronted with the questions about photography that matter most to me.

People, unprotected by their roles, become isolated in beauty and intellect and illness and confusion.

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me.