There is something about this process, and about the whole 8 x 10 [camera] business, that takes it out of the arena of the snapshot, even though, of course, I'm always desperate for that feeling. I wanted those family pictures to look effortless. I wanted them to look like snapshots. And some of them did.

When the good pictures come, we hope they tell truths, but truths 'told slant,' just as Emily Dickinson commanded.

To be able to take my pictures, I have to look, all the time, at the people and places I care about. And I must do so with both ardor and cool appraisal, with the passions of eye and heart, but in that ardent heart there must also be a splinter of ice.

Sometimes I think the only memories I have are those that I’ve created around photographs of me as a child. Maybe I’m creating my own life. I distrust any memories I do have. They may be fictions, too.

I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do.

You can tell a good ruined lens, right from the get-go.... That’s the kind of lens I'm looking for.

It is easier for me to take ten good pictures in an airplane bathroom than in the gardens at Versailles.