“Nobody at Magnum decides for the other what he should do and everyone is free to tell someone else: “Well, what about this story? I don’t like it for this and that reason — because of this picture.” It is extremely fruitful to have somebody to talk to as an equal. This give and take is a most profitable thing because we keep learning from each other. I keep learning from the younger members just as I learned from Bob [Robert] Capa and Chim [David Seymour] how to make picture stories. Cornell Capa, for instance, has a very keen journalistic sense; and as for the other photographer, each makes his own contribution. Everybody in Magnum has full freedom; there’s no doctrine, there is no school, but there is something that unites all of us very strongly — I can’t define it; it may be a certain feeling of freedom and a respect for reality.”

“The things I learned from the army - and I think it was a lesson for life - was how to work in unison with other people. How to take responsibility. Things like that I learned in the army.”

“As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves.”

“Learning to be wise has a deeper purpose than just learning to be smart. To become wise, we must learn to understand and master things we do not know. Learn from the mistakes we make ourselves. Learn from the mistakes other people make, and find out how other people achieved success.”

“.. keep working quietly and have faith in what I tell you, never ask how someone else did it or is doing, try to understand nature, observe everything, try to learn to see and find your easiest way to represent it; one can make different choices from nature, follow what the heart tells you, for which you feel the most.... search for what contains effect, something what wants to tell clear things.”

“What are stories for if we don't learn from them?”

“I think for both of us, though, it was really refreshing because given that I didn’t know a lot about him, everything that I have learned about him, I learned through him as opposed to having grown up around different news stories or tabloids, whatever else. Anything I learned about him and his family was what he would share with me, and vice versa. So for both of us it was a very authentic and organic way to get to know each other.”

“That's the reason I always say about music, the blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. Without the roots, you have no fruits so it's better keeping the roots alive because it means better fruits from now on.”

“That’s the thing about spies. Most of the secrets we keep are from each other.”

“I just heard a story from someone the other day where somebody was beaten up by Christians for wearing one of our shirts. Of course, that's a very Christian thing to do.”