Actually, ambition won't get you that far. You'll shift gears. You'll see something that's shinier. But if you believe... then you're the long-distance runner.

My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.

Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.

Essentially what photography is is life lit up.

We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make.

Life rarely presents fully finished photographs. An image evolves, often from a single strand of visual interest - a distant horizon, a moment of light, a held expression.

A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.

Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.

For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.

I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.

Being laughed at is excellent preparation for marriage.

A young bride can put on makeup at 6 in the morning and look fabulous at midnight. I have about a 15-minute window where I actually look good, and then I have to wash my face and start over.

There are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book.

It's as if there's a magnet on the outside of the posts and bar.

We passed over in a sweep of sorrow that would persist into our small forever. We just keep going.

Needs can be fulfilled, desires never. Needs are natural, desires are perverted.

While you see a chance take it, find romance, fake it, because it's all on you.

In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.

I said it in the beginning. That I was gonna take them niggaz out the game and sure enough I will. Already people can't look at Biggie and not laugh.

Many times man lives and dies Betweeen his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man die in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead