Whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it's just about impossible to follow up with words. They don't have anything to do with each other.

Many people one meets in life somehow think they know you simply because they're hanging out at the same counter-but they really don't know a thing about you.

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.

It quickly came to be that I grew interested in photographing whatever was there wherever I happened to be. For any reason.

The immediate reviews were very hostile, but they didn't bother me-I had the attitude that I was right. The poor guys who were critics just didn't understand the works at all. I was sorry about that, but it didn't weigh on my mind a bit.

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

I had the attitude that I would work with this present-day material and do the best I could to describe it with photography, not intending to make any particular comment about whether it was good or bad or whether I liked it or not. It was just there, and I was interested in it. That's what I still do today.