After the war, photography came alive, in part because everybody started to use the 35mm camera, and worked on the street instead of in a studio, and that made an enormous difference in not only how photographs looked, but what they were about.

Style tells you a lot more about the truth than substance, because it comes at the truth in an oblique way, it comes in on a slant, it doesn't tell you what it is. It's unexpected and it makes you laugh and think.

Having one perfect thing was less important than having a range of ideas, realizing they were all taking you in a certain direction.

Although I had a few jobs that I didn't like, or quit, or got fired from, I really loved New York from the moment I got here and I never stopped.

Style is a way of talking about yourself.

New York was big enough and wide enough that it allowed for reasonably eccentric people like me to thrive. It was a perfect place for me.

I was dyslexic before anybody knew what dyslexia was. I was called 'slow'. It's an awful feeling to think of yourself as 'slow' - it's horrible.