"television seems to tell us everything we need to know. it drains the mystery by suggesting that what we see is all there is. good photography restores the mystery of the world by stopping time so that we can both see and reflect upon what is there. hence the unending strangeness of photography: that it both documents the world, establishes ( Read more... )

"That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it."

-Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

As photographers, we should study and reflect upon the details of the process; practice is essential, for when we are making photographs, we should be free to work creatively and intuitively, drawing upon our knowledge and experience to bring everything together as a performing musician must do -- with no interference or technical issues with the " ( Read more... )

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been ( Read more... )

Men frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy nights especially." I am tempted to reply such, - This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot ( Read more... )

"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind ( Read more... )

"...beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes."

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any thing, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?"

"No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof."Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, ( Read more... )

"Trails are like that: you're floating along in a Shakesperean Arden paradise and expect to see nymphs and fluteboys, then suddenly you're struggling in a hot broiling sun of hell in dust and nettles and poison oak... just like life."

- Jack Kerouac; The Dharma Bums

"The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to, - for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well, - is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person ( Read more... )