When I came to New York in 1949, there was already an entire fresh avant-garde film movement blooming in New York and California. It was a very, very exciting period!

Yes, I got my first Bolex camera a few weeks after being dropped in New York by the United Nations Refugee Organization. That was on October 29th, 1949. With my brother Adolfas, we wanted to make a film about displaced persons, how one feels being uprooted from one's home.

I came to New York with $500 and I had to live on that, but thankfully I was taken up by photographers quickly.

People with brains went to New York, and people with faces came West.

I came to New York in 1962 and it began to look like I might he able to make a living in 1972.

I was in New York and I walked into this pet store and came out with a dog.