A picture is what it is and I’ve never noticed that it helps to talk about them, or answer specific questions about them, much less volunteer information in words. It wouldn’t make any sense to explain them. Kind of diminishes them. People always want to know when something was taken, where it was taken, and, God knows, why it was taken. It gets really ridiculous. I mean, they’re right there, whatever they are. 

 You become technically proficient whether you want to or not, the more you take pictures. 

 I only ever take one picture of one thing. Literally. Never two. So then that picture is taken and then the next one is waiting somewhere else. 

 I just wait until [my subject] appears, which is often where I happen to be. Might be something right across the street. Might be something on down the road. And I’m usually very pleased when I get the image back. It’s usually exactly what I saw. I don’t have any favorites. Every picture is equal but different. 

 Words and pictures don’t— They’re like two different animals. They don’t particularly like each other. 

 I’ve always assumed that the abstract qualities of [my] photographs are obvious. For instance, I can turn them upside down and they’re still interesting to me as pictures. If you turn a picture that’s not well organized upside down, it won’t work. 

 Well, I mean, who the hell hasn’t been arrested a few times? I don’t know why everyone wants to make such a big deal out of that. 

 I had an old Canon and a Leica, but I didn’t know the first thing about photography. Never learnt it off anybody either. It quickly came to be that I grew interested in photographing whatever was there wherever I happened to be. For any reason.