All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears.

The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.

While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the registering of an emanation (light waves reflected by objects) — a material vestige of its subject in a way that no painting can be.

It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.

My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.

Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: “There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy

To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing - a hand worker in an era of mass production.