Sally Mann

I'd park myself in the bookstore and read with one eye on everyone coming in. I remember reading a Robert Bly book of poetry.

Though I made my share of mistakes, as all parents do, I was devoted to my kids. I walked them to school every morning and walked back to pick them up at 3.

I feel I'm a strange mixture of insecurity and strength. Most of us, probably most people. I'm transferring that same concept to the people I photograph.

I just started taking pictures, and it was - it was an instant love affair. It was just ecstatic.

I taught up in Maine a couple of times and wasn't able to take a single picture. All that blue sky! Ugh. Sparkling clear air, just terrible. I couldn't do it.

I'm not a good photographer, not a good writer. I'm a pretty regular person whose insecurity is so pervasive that it makes me always feel vulnerable.

It's a touchy subject, but as a Southerner, you can't ignore our history any more than a Renaissance painter can ignore the Virgin Mary. And it's impossible to drive down a road or eat a vegetable or pass a church without being reminded of slavery.

I'm the weird person who completely loved and devoured 'Middlemarch' but who has not finished far shorter and more readable books due to distraction or the fact that by some miracle I am sleeping through the night.

I think the media is a fear-mongering operation. They love to rile their viewership up or to scare them.

It didn't help my career to be living in Appalachia.

Weeks go by, and I don't talk to another living soul.

Eventually, my highbrow parents, who so hated the Eisenhower suburban culture of the 1950s that the only magazines they subscribed to were 'The Atlantic' and 'The New Yorker,' broke down and got 'Life' magazine.