[The building of the transcontinental railway] was something truly earth-shaking and, whether or not there had been a dime in it for me, sooner or later I would have been out on the grade with my cameras.

And if any work that I have done should have value beyond my own lifetime, I believe it will be the happy labors of the decade 1869-1878.

Portrait photography never had any charms for me, so I sought my subjects from the house-tops, and finally from the hill-tops and about the surrounding country the taste strengthening as my successes became greater in proportion to the failures.

Since 1873, I have been back four or five times. I have used the best cameras and the most sensitive emulsions on the market. I have snapped my shutter, morning, noon and afternoon. I have never come close to matching those first plates. (On photographing The Mountain of the Holy Cross)

In living, as in art, rules are drawn from practice not the other way around.