Half voluntarily, half Winston's older brother [William] would take me in, saying, "Daddy, I think you oughta do this." And I'd say, "I think you're right, maybe I do need it." Sometimes a week later I'd leave the place; sometimes I'd stick it out for a month.

I want to make a picture that could stand on its own, regardless of what it was a picture of. I've never been a bit interested in the fact that this was a picture of a blues musician or a street corner or something.

My friend who I went to boarding school with was interested in photography. He insisted that I buy a camera and marched me downtown.

It was something new that was happening everywhere. You couldn't miss it. If you needed to go to the grocery you would go to the predecessors of the big supermarkets of today.

You can take a good picture of anything. A bad one, too.

I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify.

I have some that I have become a well-known-even infamous-client of, mostly in Memphis. But a great deal of that is legend and doesn't have anything to do with truth.