What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive.

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.

Most writers I know have switched to word processors. I haven't but I'm very curious about why people like it so much. I think it has something to do with the fact that at last writing, which has been such an old-fashioned, artisanal activity, even on a typewriter, has now entered the central domain of modern experience which is that of making copies, being involved in the world of duplicates and machine-mediated activities.

Loeb has been doing wonderfully patient work, exploring the American conscience from the inside. I regard him as something of a national treasure.

As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.

I certainly identify myself as a feminist.

The camera can be lenient; it is can also expert at being cruel. But its cruelty only produces another kind of beauty, according to the surrealist preferences which rule photographic taste.