“The greatest mistake is to think that we ever know why we do things...I suppose the nearest we can ever come to it is by getting what old people call 'experience.' But by the time we've got that we're no longer the persons who did the things we no longer understand. The trouble is, I suppose, that we change every moment; and the things we did stay.”

“Ah, it is impossible." "No, it is only very difficult - so very difficult that I shall be sure to accomplish it!”

“I always have a quotation for everything--it saves original thinking.”

“We are each a river with a particular abiding character, but we show radically different aspects of our self according to the territory through which we travel.”

“Anyone can take a picture of poverty; it’s easy to focus on the dirt and hurt of the poor. It’s much harder—and much more needful—to pry under that dirt and reveal the beauty and dignity of people that, but for their birth into a place and circumstance different from our own, are just like ourselves. I want my images to tell the story of those people and to move us beyond pity to justice and mercy.”

“There is too much hate in the world already. Why direct more of it at yourself?”

“People need self-respect, but self-respect must be earned -- it cannot be self-respect if it's not earned -- and the only way to earn anything is to achieve it in the face of the possibility of failing.”

“My anxieties have anxieties.”