The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations - each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony.

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.

The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations - each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony.

Everything I do is a metaphor of the universal order.

I allowed life to give me presents. And everything just sort of happened the way it was supposed to happen. I did not pursue anything. It more or less pursued me.

I always say yes to everything because I always feel that whatever comes my way, life meant for me.

I feel that everything has to come from the heart, and it cannot come from the intellect.

I feel that is more important than my work, the influence I have on my students.

I had a natural feeling for sculpture, and the nudes are my sculpture.

I have no regrets about my work. To be a photographer was a gift of the gods. I can't imagine anything that would have been better.

I learned early on that if I was to get attention, I would have to be charming. Even the models I've photographed are often like that. Some of them are not beautiful. But, if you catch them in the right light, they glow.

I look at ordinary objects, and I see things that other people don't see. That's why I'm a photographer.

I never took a photograph. Instead, I became a good listener.

I think of the nudes as seed pods, like flowers or grasses. They are universal bodies.

I understood the craft of photography when done by an artist is art.

I was a very, very careful printer when I used 8-by-10 film. I probably spent more time on printing than anything else. The more the prints were appreciated, the more time I spent on them.

I'm no snapshot artist. I make very careful choices always, even if I'm using a 35mm camera.

I've always photographed beauty, but I've never been beautiful myself.

If I have chosen the female form in particular, it is because beauty has been debased and exploited in our sensual 20th century.

It seems a perfectly normal thing to be 95.

My quest, through the magic of light and shadow, is to isolate, to simplify, and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity.

Photographs speak to me, and I obey.

Seeing comes from the inside, from the heart, from life's experiences.

To indicate the ideal proportion and reveal sculptural mass and the dominating spirit is my goal.

To me... San Francisco is an ideal city, intellectually stimulating and naturally beautiful. The oceans and forests are close enough to refresh the spirit; the architecture is always exciting.

To raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of woman has been my mission.

When I was young, anywhere I would go in Germany, I would see my father's posters. Everyone knew about him. And he had many friends who were artists who were also quite famous. So, for me, it seemed very natural to be an artist and be known.

If youre not interested in life, then photography has no meaning.

There is nothing unimportant in the universe.

The clouds may drop down titles and estates, and wealth may seek us, but wisdom must be sought.

A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don't get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

Only he shakes the heavens and from its treasures takes our the winds. He joins the waters and the clouds and produces the rain. He does all those things. Only he realizes miracles permanently.

The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.

Ideas rose in clouds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.

I'm a dreamer. I have to dream and reach for the stars, and if I miss a star then I grab a handful of clouds.

Clouds and darkness surround us, yet Heaven is just, and the day of triumph will surely come, when justice and truth will be vindicated.

I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave.

I know that if odour were visible, as colour is, I'd see the summer garden in rainbow clouds.

Not a breath of air stirred over the free and open prairie; the clouds were like light piles of cotton; and where the blue sky was visible, it wore a hazy and languid aspect.

All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds.

Ah, Hope! what would life be, stripped of thy encouraging smiles, that teach us to look behind the dark clouds of today, for the golden beams that are to gild the morrow.

I remember just lying in the grass, staring at the clouds, wondering where they drifted off to after they floated over Texas. I never would have imagined that one day I would follow one of those clouds and find myself in Hollywood.

You see, I had been riding with the storm clouds, and had come to earth as rain, and it was drought that I had killed with the power that the Six Grandfathers gave me.

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake.

I owned the world that hour as I rode over it. free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds, but how inseparably I was bound to them.

Astronomers are greatly disappointed when, having traveled halfway around the world to see an eclipse, clouds prevent a sight of it; and yet a sense of relief accompanies the disappointment.

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

Dark economic clouds are dissipating into an emerging blue sky of opportunity.