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.

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

As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.

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

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

'Woman on the Plaza,' with its distinct horizon, snow-like surfaces, wintry wall, stunning sunlight, sharp shadows, and hurrying figure, would become the most biographical of my photographs - an abstract image of the landscape and life of northern Ohio where I grew up and first practiced photography.

Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.

Essentially what photography is is life lit up.

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

How the visual world appears is important to me. I'm always aware of the light. I'm always aware of what I would call the 'deep composition.' Photography in the field is a process of creation, of thought and technique. But ultimately, it's an act of imaginatively seeing from within yourself.

I had luck, but I worked hard and I suffered. It's not just photography I'm talking about. It's about whatever dream you want it to be.

I think of myself as a writer who photographs. Images, for me, can be considered poems, short stories or essays. And I've always thought the best place for my photographs was inside books of my own creation.

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.

I was known as a 35-mm photographer with a view-camera mentality.

In almost every photograph I have ever made, there is something I would do to complete it. I take that to be the spirit hole or the deliberate mistake that's in a Navajo rug to not be godlike, but to be human.

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.

My dad had been an ardent amateur photographer, and he taught me to compose a photograph from the back to the front, and then populate the picture.

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 parents, grandmother and brother were teachers. My mother taught Latin and French and was the school librarian. My father taught geography and a popular class called Family Living, the precursor to Sociology, which he eventually taught. My grandmother was a beloved one-room school teacher at Knob School, near Sonora in Larue County, Ky.

The best lesson I was given is that all of life teaches, especially if we have that expectation.

There are a lot of ways to be expressive in life, but I wasn't good at some of them. Music, for instance. I was a distinct failure with the cello. Eventually, my parents sold the cello and bought a vacuum cleaner. The sound in our home improved.

There are grander and more sublime landscapes - to me. There are more compelling cultures. But what appeals to me about central Montana is that the combination of landscape and lifestyle is the most compelling I've seen on this earth. Small mountain ranges and open prairie, and different weather, different light, all within a 360-degree view.

There isn't an aspect of book creation I don't enjoy, and there has always been a book in my life to dream about or work on.

When I first went to 'National Geographic,' I thought I was the least qualified person to step through the doors. But because of my parents and the culture of continual learning they imposed on us, I later came to believe I was the most qualified person who ever worked there.

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

The Divine of the Lord in heaven is love, for the reason that love is receptive of all things of heaven, such as peace, intelligence, wisdom and happiness.

You wanna get the truth out of me, get me hammered.

The journey from engineering to acting just happened. I guess some things are meant to be.

Jo left me a few months ago for 10 days. I get this note: I'll come back when the real Ronnie comes back.

Political cartoonists get hung up on daily deadlines and the front page. The worst thing you can do is open up the newspaper and ask, 'What's funny about this?'

I think Walking Dead is one of the friendliest new reader type books in that every time a new trade is shipped out, a new issue is shipped out at the same time.

Prior to Saving Private Ryan I never worked with men. I was always working with some babe, and it was always about falling in love, and it just got turned around. I'm not looking for any particular kind of story. I wait until it comes across my desk.

At the end of the day, TV is supposed to be entertaining. But it's important for me that there's some take-away value from it.

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?

I'm not just offensive, I'm very smart about the way that I do it, and that takes a lot of time. People say that young comics shouldn't be trying these things. That's ridiculous. You should try everything and see what sticks.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'

I probably grow half my food. It's a good way to keep perspective.

To share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller, but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it.

If there is no passion in your life then have you really lived Find your passion whatever it may be. Become it and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you TO you and BECAUSE of you.

By the time I got to building synthesizers, I had perhaps 20 years' experience building electronic musical instruments.

It's nice to play a character that has a soulful, dependent, close relationship. It must mean my character is interesting in some way.

Governor, why wouldn't anyone want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, unless they detested their own country or were ignorant of its greatness?

Outside of the mindless sitcoms that the networks thrive on, people able to think generally consider most entertainment is escape in one form or another.

Education isn't part of my agenda, it is my agenda.

Some people say I chastise the Republican Party too much.

Modeling teaches you to be completely concious of the camera. Acting is being totally unconcious of it.

The Louvre stopped buying paintings in 1848, and neither the Metropolitan nor the Hermitage acquire contemporary material.