My father taught me photography. It was his hobby, and we had a small darkroom in the fruit cellar of our basement. It was the kind of makeshift darkroom that was only dark at night.

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.

We're better off not worrying about ourselves, and to do that, we have to worry about others.

I like to think I'm helping them by hating them. I'm reminding them that they aren't God's gift to humankind.

Look at the mirror! Who are you? You are not yourself, you are your culture! Do you want to be yourself? Then leave your prison and discover the paths beyond your path!

I know what I'm giving up for Lent: my New Year's resolutions.

I'm telling you, November 8, we better be careful, because that presidential election is going to be rigged. And I hope the Republicans are watching closely, or it's going to be taken away from us.

I get terrible butterflies. Before I go onstage, I'll have to freak out for five minutes. I scream. It seems to help!

I'm still figuring out why people would want to look at me. Maybe it's generic beauty, but it's weird to be valued for something I was born with.

The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.

A really religious person has no theology. Yes, he has the experience, he has the truth, he has that luminosity, but he has no theology.

I was a pretty dark person to begin with. I have always been more drawn to darkness