I think these are terrible times to be anything in.
I go out to take a walk, I see something, I take a picture. I take photographs. I have avoided profound explanations of what I do.
Photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you'd never paid attention to.
A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.
I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera. I look into the camera and take pictures. My photographs are the tiniest part of what I see that could be photographed. They are fragments of endless possibilities.
I think I’ve said this before many times—that photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you had never paid any attention to. And as you photograph, one of the benefits is that the world becomes a much richer, juicier, visual place. Sometimes it is almost unbearable — it is too interesting. And it isn’t always just the photos you take that matters. It is looking at the world and seeing things that you never photograph that could be photographs if you had the energy to keep taking pictures every second of your life.
In order to build a career and to be successful, one has to be determined. One has to be ambitious. I much prefer to drink coffee, listen to music and to paint when I feel like it… Maybe I was irresponsible. But part of the pleasure of being alive is that I didn’t take everything as seriously as one should.
Logic is no answer to passion.
When you're on the bus or subway or in your car, why busy your mind with all the garbage of advertisements? Why fill your mind with television and radio? Somehow you have to decide what your mind will receive. I don't mean you shouldn't ever go to movies or watch television, but control what enters your mind and heart. It's not just a question of pushing bad things out but also a question of holding on to something really good.
Regardless of whether we are required to purchase medical insurance, know that we can only buy real health insurance in the produce section of the local supermarket.
[On his heroin addiction:] I did it to myself. It wasn't society. . . it wasn't a pusher, it wasn't being blind or being black or being poor. It was all my doing.