“The funding formula for the state of Maryland for education is named after me, it's called the Thornton Funding . . . It's because I love young people, the children, and I want to make sure their education is adequately and equitably funded and that we have excellent education for our children. The governor appointed me to chair that commission, and I did that because all children should have equal education funding in high quality schools.”

“Deep down a lot of people down here have hearts and are caring. There’s a lot of things that go into communities. There’s a lot of people out here that help the homeless, that feed the homeless, that volunteer to help the homeless. There's a lot of charities, and in my opinion I think people like that need help. There’s a lot of motivation to get people off the streets, get them jobs; there’s a lot of outlets to put people back into society.”

“My motto of the day is, ‘A day without laughter is a day wasted.’”

“I perform in my mind, but music was very influential for me growing up. I grew up in West Baltimore. At the time when you’re a teenager you kinda go through this weird period, so I would lock myself in my room and listen to music—and drown me out just from living in the city and neighborhood I grew up in. I did write music, and I did eventually try to pursue it. Didn't go full time, but music still a huge part of who I am. They called me ‘juke box’ because literally, I start singing and I have no idea that I’m singing until someone says something. But music grounds me. It keeps my spirits high and calms me and puts me in peace, especially when we have so much tragedy going across America and within the community.”

“My kids and my grandkids mean a great deal to me.  And my family”

“I always like places that can be nowhere else, and Baltimore is one of those places. You can't mistake it. Although it shares similarities with Detroit, with Pittsburgh, with some southern states, it's just its own thing and I love places like that. For better or for worse, Baltimore holds onto its personality . . . I kind of feel like it’s time to be unique.”

“I’m just trying to be, I guess you can call it, a community activist—help out the community.  Because, you know, it’s a lot of kids around here that need adult mentors to guide them and lead them.  They don’t have enough guidance and our children are getting lost out here with the drugs and the crime.”

“I think Baltimore is a very community-oriented type of city.  Whether it's between neighbors within their blocks or just neighborhoods within the city, people are very familial . . . So that type of just three degrees of separation from every single person has definitely made a big impact on how I do my work, how I do my schooling, how I just interact within the world—acknowledging that maybe one day we’ll cross paths again, whether directly or indirectly.  So I think that Baltimore is very serendipitous in that way.”

“The thing that I love the most about Baltimore is the people here are very receiving and receptive.  And when things go down and when things happen for the worst, we always try to make it for the better.  Because here we believe in ‘Good better best, never let it rest.  Until your good is your better, and your better is your best.’  So as long as we keep striving and as long as we keep praying for our city and state, then God will see us through.”

“I work with clients that are trying to stop using drugs.  I like kids, I love working with kids . . . My biggest goal is to go to college.”

“My mission in life is to cultivate the light that is within the walls of my essence, and to give a breath of life to those who have been overwhelmed by the darkness of the world and the eternal struggle to live in the light . . . Some people may not recognize that they’re in a darkness as well, and there's times where you may not recognize that your self is in the darkness. But to make that light more brighter is to grow. So as I grow, I want other people to grow.  And that's by us communicating and sharing our thoughts and expressing how we feel about situations and each other.”

“I’ve been doing hair ever since I was young, but I just started college not too long ago.”

“I think by us doing good we will be teachers to those who are doing wrong.  Sometimes people get tired of doing bad things or hurting themselves; I know I did.  I’m trying to set an example for my neighborhood.  A lot of my heroes are from my neighborhood.  I would like to be a hero of my neighborhood for my youth.”

I’m from Sandtown, all my life, born and raised right here in Sandtown. I went to school right here where we standing. This was my high school . . .  My family was born here; they died here . . . My grandmother died right there on the corner of Baker and Calhoun.  She was the neighborhood cook, the neighborhood Miss Emma . . . She cooked for a lot of people—not just her family, for the families that didn't have nothing . . . She looked out her window and said “Girl, come in here and eat. You hungry?  Where the children at?  Bring your children down and feed them.”  She just cooked for the neighborhood.

“I would want people to know that mental health is just as important as physical health, if not more.  I have a lot of friends who suffer from severe depression and anxiety and it's just, I don’t know, it's a thing that people are starting to talk about more, but I just feel like because it's not a physical thing you can see, people don't take it as seriously.  It's like, ‘I know you have that, but I can't see it,’ so they forget or don't really adjust to how they deal with that person.”

“I value gratitude and kindness very highly, and I think one often follows the other.  Through some of my most challenging personal struggles, I’ve found that trying to come back to a place of being grateful can be a sort of roadmap to help get you through to the other side.”

“In learning theater, I was only able to learn it through a westernized, European eye, which turned me off. So I decided to pursue photography professionally . . . being behind the camera, which to me is all a conversation. It's all in the same realm of storytelling and having a voice, having something to say and having a story to tell. I feel comfortable where I’m at, and I feel like I have more creative control over my art and the things that I want to say, the things that feel important to share.”

“Those kids [at school] are true artists and they’re very talented.  That kinda happens when trauma is around, so that's why I think Baltimore is going through so much, just bringing the arts back.  And even schools that don't typically collaborate with local artists are starting to do that because art just really heals.  It just really really really heals.  Like right after the Freddie Gray thing you started seeing so much art in the city, like so much.  Like ‘forget this, we’re gonna wheat paste, we’re gonna tag, we’re gonna paint murals,’ and I think it's beautiful.”

“For me, mentorship is about really helping those that are coming up; giving of yourself; imparting whatever wisdom, whatever knowledge, whatever accessibility you have; really helping to bring those up. I now am not the young kid anymore; I’m fifty-one years old, and so I understand that now I am in this particular place. But there are those, my students, that are coming up, that are forging their paths—and I know a lot of people. So now it’s really my turn to help them come up, and to help them establish their platform. For me, I feel like it is a responsibility to do that, not a luxury, not my own personal want, but really my responsibility to do that. I don’t think I could go to sleep at night if I didn’t function as a mentor for a lot of people.”

“I love the beautiful daylight out here.  I love the sun.  I just love people.  I love to smile.  I love being clean and sober.  I just love life . . . Without God I wouldn’t be able to do any of this; I absolutely need Him in my life. My faith is very very strong today.”

“The quirkiness that is Baltimore . . . I love it. It's definitely an old-boy town. If you know people, you can get connected. If you don't know people, you're kind of in trouble. It's really kind of one of the last old-school towns. Baltimore is real; even though it used to be blue collar and that’s gone, we still have those blue-collar, down-home kind of ways about us, that people are family even if they aren't family.”

“I am a 21-year-old Ecuadorian citizen, the first in my family to attend college. I moved to Baltimore three years ago, and I’m proud to say I’m months away from receiving two bachelor's degrees. When I arrived, the first best choice I ever made was to explore the city of Baltimore that I’m now proud to call my second home.”

“My neighborhood was pretty rough when I was growing up in Baltimore. It led me to bad choices and sometimes led me to even to jail. But now my life today as I live, I realized that God had blessed me with a gift and my gift is to bless other people when I have it, if I have it.”

“I would love to really see that all people get together and maintain unity of all colors and, you know, protect each other from all the tragedies and devastations that are going on today, and work together to make the whole world better.”

“I love my neighbors. Everybody calls me Nick. And I like to play football with my brother. And I like to play and go outside.”

“One of the things that I like about BYFA is that it gives [young people] an opportunity to tell their stories. Young people need to not only tell their stories, but they need to learn about their history and where they come from and, . . . especially black youth, need to know the strengths that they come from. And that they’re powerful, that they’re intelligent.  They come from intelligence and they don’t know that. A lot of kids don’t know that, so they will then emulate and take charge and show the world what they can do. They just need to know that they have everything within them to do whatever it is that they want to do, and I don’t think they get told that enough, if at all, especially in the schools.”

“Perseverance. Never give up. If that’s what you wanna do, do it. Even if it’s just a hobby, still pursue it. If dancing is your dream, still dance. If rapping is your dream, still do it. But know that there are other things as well as just that. Don’t put all your eggs in that one basket. You can still be a dancer but be a doctor as well. You can still be an athlete but be a lawyer as well. You can do tons of things. Don’t just focus on that one thing.”

“I have a young granddaughter, 18, she’s at Dixon College. I just took her a couple weeks ago.  And her mission is to become a judge, a wrongful conviction judge. That’s my hero.  Because if she can work through this and what she’s been through, that’s a hero for me.”

“We need more resources for the younger kids and even for like the older kids as well.  We can actually find a bond with other people in order to create and express themselves, because we don't have enough expression, so we need to find that type of place, that type of common ground where people can really express their opinions.  So I think this is great program where people can actually do that: create, talk about what's going on, be the voice, and actually inspire people to come through and express the kind of person that they can be.”

“My mommy, my brother, my sister, and my daddy loves me.”

“My role model was the guys that was up on the corners because I was easily impressed by what I’d seen.  I was always taught right from wrong, but when you don't actually have a male figure in your life to direct you to a certain path you start making your own decisions.  And my decisions led me down a dark path.  I have to lead by example.  I can get up here and say that the youth needs to do this, people need to do that, but it starts with me.  So today, I’m leading by example.”

“I am the proud owner of 2 AM Bakery, ‘where the dough rises.’  We make the world's best carrot cake. We also have a project called Eye Can B-More, where we are working with young people and individuals who have returned from the criminal justice system, to teach them culinary skills so that they can opt out of criminal middle and become taxpaying citizens.”

I go around the community, try to get people into substance abuse [counseling], try to get them help with housing, try to get them clothes and food. If they've been, you know, in an abusive relationship, direct them in the right direction to some help . . . You know, we talk about the problem with the children in our community, but we have nothing open for the children in the community to do but to interact with grown people, you know?  So how are we going to save the children that’s doing this and that if we don't have anything to give them to do?

“Coming up, there were more programs and rec centers open, more things to do.  Things to bridge the gap between police and the community, play centers, more options for me to think out what I’d want to do when I became older.  That’s a scarce thing right now.”

“I'm from Philly, so y’all already know and y’all already hear about my neighborhood.  In my neighborhood, you gotta have a certain type of maturity to survive and live in my neighborhood.  Because in my neighborhood, the tough guys die first and the smart guys live longer.”

“I have a background in sculpture, originally, and then imaging and digital arts, too. Sculpture was my first love . . . I’ve had my studio in the community for twenty years. I guess in the beginning I wasn’t that involved in the community. It was only when the community association started that I started going to the meetings . . . I’ve done a lot of working helping with the community gardens, and we’ve turned 108 vacant lots into community green spaces. It has been a lot of work with everybody working together, which has been quite an experience.”

“I like that [Coppin State University] is really family-oriented.  It's just a good environment for me because I had the opportunity the meet new people and just connect with different people.”

“I ran track for my high school, for Northwestern . . . I like running daily. I have days when I don't feel like running, but I actually like running track because it actually clears my mind.”

“As a basketball coach your players becomes your family for life—the young men and women that I've had the pleasure of coaching over the years. And to see them successful well after their playing days are over, that's what I am most proud of. Coaching the game of basketball is second nature, but coaching the game of life is much more rewarding in my opinion.  It's never about me; it's always been about the kids, past and present.  Words I stand by are, ‘you should always judge your success on the lives you've impacted, not the amount of wins you put on the board.’”

“I dance to basically let out all of my feelings about school and home and everything. Dance—I continued with it because it was fun and bringing me happiness in my life.”

“I’m proud to be in the organization called CARE. I feel as though we’ve come a long way . . . I’ve been in the neighborhood for about forty-seven years. I've seen it grow; I've seen it when it was down, and it made me kind of down; but we’ve come up. Not just in the structure of housing, but also in our neighborhood, and seeing that the neighbors feel more secure.”

“I just want to say I’m thankful to live in a community.  I raised my children there, I had six girls.  My sisters and I both, we lived there most of our lives. I’ve been there over forty years in my home where I stay at.”

“People allow us to do a lot of good things. Like watch TV (if it's not that loud) and study homework and play with our friends.”

“My art is more of an expression of how I feel and what I feel . . . It's my way of letting people in, and to make myself look how I look in the pictures . . . I don’t really like being seen, which confuses [me] because I have Instagram, where I’ll post pictures of myself where I’m dressed up, and I look really outgoing.  But really I prefer not to be seen.  But then I’ll dress up like someone else or in a costume . . . It is me, I just don’t present myself like that all the time . . . I’ve gotten stuff like ‘you’re a punk person’; ‘you’re an earth lady’; so many different comments or descriptions that people get from what I put out there.  I think it’s all accurate though. With my art I can put that out there, like this is who I am.”

“My philosophy, value, ideology is that anything is possible if you try.  If it's something you're into, you should definitely try it out.  Just like I tell my students when we’re filming or doing anything, if they have an idea and some people think it's too big, I tell them no idea is ever too big.  You just have to try . . . There's nothing like failure; you learn so much from your failures.  And I compliment anybody who fails.  The more times you fail, the more times I am excited to see that, because I know you're gonna grow.”

“What I found most surprising about Baltimore is that all of my friends live within a four-block radius of each other, and we all bought houses.  So that’s been really fun.  We’re all stuck up here together now.  We just walk in between them all the time now; it's great.”

“They're killing for nothing.  It's like genocide one body at time, and it's like self-inflicted. We can blame it on this, we can blame it on that, but when it's all said and done, it's us killing us. It hurts because some of us don’t even think we can do better.  There was a time I didn’t think I could do better . . . We feel how we feel because we think how we think.  I had to change my thinking, you know; I had to want better.  There’s no magic out here, so if I want better I gotta do better.”

“Be your best self. Have happiness with what you have.  It’s always good to strive for more, but never feel like you have to reach a certain level to be happy.”

“[My family’s] love means a whole lot to me, because now I know I got some people that ain’t gonna ever leave my side, and that are going to love me emotionally and forever.”

“Art is a journey. And you never really arrive, but you get better and better hopefully. And with the evolution of your art, hopefully there's also the evolution of your character and everything that makes you the best person that you can be. Expressive arts calls for courage from the time you lift up your pen or pick up your camera or put brush to canvas. These are all motivations that come from your experiences, from the things that you want to share with others as stories or frozen moments (which are also stories). And we need to make certain that we value the expressive arts as part of being a complete human being in the 21st century. The arts have taken a back seat to a lot of different things that are driven by opportunity and money, and that seem risk averse. And yet art, which provides high rewards, also comes with high risk, and that's why it takes courage to become a practitioner or to follow your path. Not to say that you can't be many things, and art is a stream of that, which I think should always be the case—no matter if you are a doctor, a scientist, a teacher, a truck driver, a cashier, in retail. There should always be an avenue for artistic expression in your life.” 

“I don’t think we all know what [peace] looks like, and universally it might not be the same.  I would love to see what peace looks like in Baltimore, expressed on someone’s face, ‘cause I think that’s something we all would like to get to.”

“I want to help young people get involved with financial savings and financial awareness rather than spending—the importance of investing and saving rather than spending.  Seeing how the kids follow other adults and videos, and they get fascinated by the jewelry and the flashy cars, but don’t realize that that’s not really their stuff—they’re borrowing it or renting it.”

“We were youth before we were adults. The youth are the most important because if the youth aren’t good then the next generation won't be any better. It's easy to become an adult and make better of yourself, but it’s harder to raise a kid to be great off the bat.”

“Comedy is an outlet. I feel like it’s something I naturally levitate to, regardless of whatever is going on in my life. I always find time to be able to talk and share and express myself, even if it’s in front of people. I don’t know why but I rock with it.”

“Through my visual art, through my creativity, I’m here to really heal and empower people; get people to really see and understand how magical people truly are.  I really just want to uplift people . . . My legacy is going to be the people that saw my artwork or read my captions and just heard my voice, and were able to really take a moment and say ‘Hey, you know what?  No matter what I’ve been through and no matter what I’m going through, I will love myself, and I will get through this.  And that I’m powerful, and that I’m magical, and I can do the impossible.’  That’s the most important thing to me.”

“Do not wallow in the quagmire of mediocrity.  Don't settle for whatever you can.  Strive to be your best, and try your best at all things that you do.  [Mediocrity] to me is settling for just any old thing, not striving or having any goals in mind, not trying to accomplish, or be your best self.”

“The one message that I want to convey to society is that the greatest test of courage on earth is defeat without losing heart.  That's very important in society today.  With life there are a lot of trials and tribulations and I think there are many ways to conquer your fears and use them as a gateway to success without losing heart.”

“Two years ago I was elected to the Baltimore City Council. I am the councilman for the district where we are in West Baltimore. The community that I represent doesn’t really reflect the people and the promise that's within this neighborhood. It is a loving, it is a vibrant community; it is a resource-rich community.  It is a unified community, but oftentimes it doesn’t reflect that, and together we can change that.”

“There's something about the outside of a horse that’s good for the inside of a man.  When you're around a horse you feel peaceful, a lot more at ease.  There nothing to worry about.  You cannot find any of the old Arabbers that ever argue.  What is there to argue about?  And not only that, with all the things going on in the street, have you ever heard about an Arabber being a part of it?  Even through the uprising, they kept working every day.  Nobody bothered them.”

“My message is that I want police brutality against minorities to stop.  Yes, I would say [it has] personally [affected me] because I am a minority, and I just feel scared in a way . . . I hope it would never happen to me personally or my family, but I’m still scared.”

“I realized that our community is basically in shambles. We as a whole need to come together and work together to make our community better. When it comes to, like, the crime uprising, the drugs in our community, or just basic stuff like the trash floating around, we as a whole can come together and fix some of these problems, and that’s what I think we should do.”

“This park [Druid Hill] became my outside home.  Whenever I could, I would climb up the hill and look back at my neighborhood.  The neighborhood I grew up in has a lot of memories, some that I enjoy and some that I wish I could change.  I enjoyed going to the park when I was tired of home, the chaos I couldn’t control.”

“I have two sisters.  [They’re] older. I like to go to their house and play board games.”

People tried to steal that land from us . . . It was over 97 acres of land . . . Pennyfield Lock is one of the locks off of the C&O Canal.  And that's the lock that the land sits near . . . The Davises and the Martins bought that land in 1865 from what was formerly the slave master who owned that plantation.  So when they did that they ended up keeping the land . . . The land is protected, the land deed is protected, so it remains in the family.

“Being a part of Baltimore Youth Film Arts has been my greatest decision since accepting my position as a Johns Hopkins student.  My transition from Atlanta to Baltimore was a very rocky one that I didn’t enjoy too much. During my first year I struggled trying to find my way in this new city and didn’t know what to do.  I applied to work at BYFA my sophomore year and since then my life has been nothing but positive.  Baltimore Youth Film Arts is not just a program but is an actual family.”

“We decided to form our own tap dance group to bring back the style of tap dance because it's an older form of dance . . . We hope to give back to the community and inspire the next generation of tap dancers.”

“There's a rich culture in Baltimore, if you pay attention and you look into the history of things that are not spoken of in everyday society.  In Baltimore you will uncover some great things as far as historically—if we talk about spirituality, if we talking about slavery, if we're talking about art, music; there's a lot things in Baltimore to talk about . . . In Baltimore we are a mixture of a lot of expressions.  So we’re like a gumbo city: we take a lot from everywhere else and make it our own.”

“‘Any man can be a father, but it takes a real man to be a dad.’  Today is my dad’s birthday but he's deceased, and I have his ashes around my neck right now.  My actual biological father was never in my life, so that's why I say that quote.  My dad always wanted to go to a homecoming game, so I brought him here with me today.”

“[Kids Safe Zone] is actually the first place I learned to engage with my community, especially youth. They taught me I have a talent that I can reach the knuckleheads, which I do. And I really like to come back here. Mrs. Essence, she’s awesome, and I didn’t know she took over this building. I would really like to come back and get involved with the youth. It makes me happy; it makes me smile; I have the attitude for it.”

“My family is important—especially my father, my sister, and my two friends.  I consider my friends family as well. They’re there whenever I need someone to talk to.  They’re very supportive.  They give me advice on what to do whenever I have problems with something. And I love them.”

“I love myself, I love my kids, I love what I do as far as a parent, and I love working.”

“Being a part of Project Semicolon, you gotta really push through, and not everyone has the opportunity to be able to push through.  I saw myself, who I really am, who I can be.  Good vibes, positive energy.”

“God is good.  That's it.  I can't tell you anything else. God is just good. He’ll take care of you.  If you trust Him, He’ll take care of everything that's going on.  You have to trust God.  Anything else is just unacceptable.”

“I took [photography] up in high school, and then I minored in it in college and I majored in marine biology.  My ultimate goal is to do work with National Geographic doing research and taking photos.”

“Actually somebody put me onto making shirts, forreal.  I saw someone making shirts that I liked and thought, ‘I can do that, forreal.’  I started making my own designs and put it on a shirt. I started wearing it, and a couple people started buying.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing my child grow in this crazy city.”

“[Football] kept my head straight, ‘cause I had a lot of anger built up forreal, so I could just release all that anger on the field.”

“I got interested in [frisbee] by my friend’s brother that taught at my school and started a frisbee program. I played and I tried out and said ‘this is pretty fun.’  I think it's better than football.  Most people say that it's not better than football, but I think it is ‘cause you get to run, and then you get to run around somebody, then you can throw a flip, and it's a very fun, very interesting sport.”

“I don't think I’m a religious person in traditional terms (like I don't go to church or temple or anything like that), but I am a poet and somebody once told me every poet that they have ever known either wanted to be a literary writer or a minister.  And I found that interesting because I think art requires a certain degree of belief in the art, because you’re not doing it for the money or the fame; you’re painting or drawing or writing because you believe its value.  So in that sense, maybe I am religious.”

“I’m actually learning how to raise men, because my kids don't have male figures in their life. So I’m trying to learn. It's actually hard, very hard. It's harder for a guy than it is a woman. Because I had both parents in my life, and my kids don't have both parents, they just have one. It's harder for a woman raising a man, ‘cause I want them to grow up and be young gentlemen. And being in these streets is kinda hard, because it's a lot goin’ on that they are seeing. So I’m just trying to teach them that what’s going on in the streets is not the right way, and I’m trying to keep them educated.”

“I’m just here to tell you that I love Baltimore.  There's only two places in the world that I would live, back home in Miami or in Baltimore; nowhere else.  And the reason mainly is because of the people and how people really come together when needed.”

"I hate when people disregard context. It's nearly impossible to consider every single factor impacting a situation, but people should embrace that rather than making a judgment about someone else's situation knowing full well they don't have all the puzzle pieces. I'm guilty of it too. But, it still drives me nuts. I'm working on not just understanding, but valuing perspectives other than my own."

“Baltimore has changed a few times during the course of my life. It went from a very community-based city to a kinda segregated city, just based on class and racism issues. I’ve seen the city grow in certain areas. I’ve seen it kind of diminish in certain areas. And I think now the city is in kind of an artistic kind of mood. A lot of arts are being explored and a lot of building around the arts.”

“Learning to love Baltimore was a really hard task, I'm not gonna lie . . . So it took me a while to figure out like ‘Do I wanna be here?’  I was so ready to leave after college, but I stayed for college and I stayed after.  I kinda like the resilience in what I see. I was here for the riots and that scared the hell out of me, and being here while all of my friends left and went to New York and went to Cali and went home.  I was kind of like ‘Dang, I’m still here’.  [Baltimore is] a really resilient city.”

“I love her [my daughter] more than everything in the world.  She is funny and she loves to take pictures when I take out the camera.  If I don’t take a picture she will get mad at me. When I take the camera home, I teach her how to work the camera.  She is only three years old.  I think we should teach the little ones so they know how to use a camera.”

“You seal your faith in the choices you make. The choices that we make determine the life that we live and the consequences that we get back.”

“I like music . . . [“W.A.Y.S” by Jhené Aiko] is a good song.  It's very inspirational.  She talks about being down and getting through life.  And life's always gonna keep revolving and going, and no matter how hard it gets, you're gonna get stronger.  Regardless of what you're going through, you’re gonna get through it.  Music to me is everything.”

“Just for every kid in the world, just know that life itself will try to bring you down every day, but you need to know that you are more powerful than you think you are.  And God, or whoever you believe in, will bring good things to your life . . . So believe in what you can believe in, and you'll make something out of yourself. Even through the darkest days the fire will burn always.”

“The neighborhood makes the family.  And the reason why I say that is because, depending on where you live at and depending on your neighbors, it definitely helps you build a strong connection with your family.  And then the outsiders around you can help you protect your family.”

“Seeing [students’] work is probably my favorite thing [about teaching].  They will surprise you, which is nice.  It’s good to be surprised.”

“I want my art to influence people that grew up from poverty because I came from a broken home, broken environment, and I just really want them kind of to be inspired by my story. I went through homelessness; I went through foster care; I went through a lot. I make films to potentially uplift those living in adverse communities. So that’s why I’m going to MICA now, to learn more how to make films and learn more about storytelling.”

“My neighborhood is different from any other neighborhood.  You have to go miles to find a supermarket or a gas station (the nearest gas station is over by Mondawmin).  It’s not like the county, where a lot of different stores are close by.  Here, there are corner stores everywhere.  You can get things like shirts, personal care products, chips, candy, laundry detergent—you can get those nearby.  For things like shoes (except for cheap flip-flops), you have to go far.  Some places have nice big houses; some places have small houses.  Any place will be your home if you are from there.”

"I’ve been a photographer since I was 18 years old.  I worked for Reuters for almost two decades.  I covered wars, natural disasters, political upheaval, two World Cups and an Olympics . . . I was based out of different countries—Colombia, Argentina—and we would travel to all these events.  Family-wise, I could never have a relationship because I was always going somewhere, and I think my relationships didn’t last very long because of that.  And then children, like my daughter, who is 25, I hardly spent any time with her when she was little and so I tried to change when I had my son.”