I thought I was taking pictures of things that I hated. But there was something about these pictures. They were unexpectedly, disconcertingly glorious.

...assume that art begins in unhappiness. True, the goal of art is to convey a vision of coherence and peace, but the effort to develop that vision starts in the more common experience of confusion and pain.

Silence is, after all, the context for the deepest appreciation of art: the only important evaluations are finally, personal, interior ones.

Philosophy can forsake too easily the details of experience… many writers and painters have demonstrated that thinking long about what art is or ought to be ruins the power to write or paint.

The word beauty is unavoidable … it accounts for my decision to photograph … There appeared a quality, beauty seemed the only appropriate word for it, in certain photographs, and I am compelled to live with the vocabulary of this new sight … through over many years [I] still find it embarrassing to use the word beauty, I fear I will be attacked for it, but I still believe in it.

Change no one. Change nothing. React to no one, react to nothing. Do not live in the past and do not, worry about the future. Stay in the eternal now, where all is well. After all you are me and I am you. There's no difference. Do not react to the world. Do not even react to your own body. Do not even react to your own thoughts. Learn to become the witness. Learn to be quiet.

Nature photography... that acknowledges what is wrong, is admittedly sometimes hard to bear - it has to encompass our mistakes. Yet in the long run, it is important; in order to endure our age of apocalypse, we have to be reconciled not only to avalanche and hurricane, but to ourselves.