Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry.
A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to to be seen in them by the finest senses?
I'm saying look, here they come, pay attention. Let your eyes transform what appears ordinary, commonplace, into what it is, a moment in time, an observed fragment of eternity.
Photography is like fencing. You must keep your distance, wait, and then thrust.
When I'm on an adult set and I'm in a scene, I am myself. I'm not acting. I am playing to the camera, definitely, but I am myself.
It's hard sometimes to capture magic when it comes to live records.
By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.
My friends and I have always been trying to make movies, at every moment. We've tried so many different angles and approaches. But when it happens, it happens, and you just run with it.
Bring me the sunset in a cup.
I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.
The only way to kill death is through photography.
The greatest work of art about New York? The question seems nebulous. The city's magic and majesty are distilled in the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand.
The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.
The challenge of film is making it right there at that moment, and then you get to move on.
Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.
My number one rule is to keep that camera rolling. Even if it's shaky or slightly out of focus, I don't give a rip. Even if a big old alligator is chewing me up I want to go down and go, 'Crikey!' just before I die. That would be the ultimate for me.
In the sense that writing is to retrieve the past and stop the passing of time, all writing is about loss. It's not nostalgia in the sense of yearning to bring back the past, but recognition of the erosion of things as you live.
I've always thought photography was a bit of an adventure, so to come home with the film, develop it, then look at the results has more of a sense of excitement.
People go, 'What do you want to do?' What do you want to do? What are you feeling? Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do—that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
One sign of a great actor is when he can be alone by himself on the screen, doing almost nothing, and producing one of a film's defining moments.
I was extremely irritated being photographed for a long time, then I gave up caring. Photography is a nauseating cliche, but there is a lot to it. You can tell so much about a person from it. You are exaggerating the consciousness. It's life-thickening, photography.
To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.
New York is a wonderful place to shoot. The bystanders are great. They are enthusiastic. They respect the process, and you get the energy of the city.
I stood in front of a mountain and was overwhelmed by the beauty and energy; I had goosebumps. I thought, if I could record this feeling, go back home and pour it out again so other people can have that feeling, this I would want to be my work. I knew it was acting - I wanted to be like a messenger or medium.
