I have $100 billion... You realize I could spend $3 million a day, every day, for the next 100 years? And that's if I don't make another dime.
I was thinking about Afghanistan's future, Afghanistan's next generation, what we have next. These children who learn how to kill people, how to do jihad, how to behead, how to fire, this would be Afghanistan.
I do photograph things for people to look at 100 years from now. But we're such a mediated society that things become historical the next day.
If we could understand the full significance of a woman's hat we could prophesy her clothes for the next year, the interior decoration of the next two years, the architecture of the next ten years, and we would have a fairly accurate notion of the pressures, political, economic and religious that go to make the shape of an age.
For years, the Democrats have controlled the inner cities; some up to 100 years; some over 100 years; unbroken. I say to the African American community and to the Hispanic community: What the hell do you have to lose? I will fix it. We will make them good. We'll make them safe. We'll bring back jobs. We'll create good, good schools and education.
Never be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here; and never fail daily to do that good which lies next to your hand.
If you're talking 100 years, there's no doubt in my mind that all jobs will be gone, including creative ones. And 100 years is not far in the future - some of our children will be alive in 100 years.
While researching 'Horse Soldiers,' I conducted over 100 interviews in the U.S. and in Afghanistan, and in Afghanistan, I walked and studied key sites that appear in the book. I was able to capture not only the Americans' point of view but the Afghans' as well.
When I was 20 years old, if you had a $100 bill and a good idea and a strong work ethic, you could start a company.
Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.In my new book, I open with a quote from Donald Rumsfeld. In October 2001, he said of Afghanistan: "It's not a quagmire." Ten years later there are 150,000 Western troops there.
Johnny Apple, a New York Times correspondent, wrote a front-page story saying Afghanistan could be a quagmire and he was mocked and derided. What is certainly true is that all sorts of resources that would have been used in Afghanistan were diverted to Iraq. Would those resources have helped? Almost undoubtedly. Whether or not Afghanistan would be a peaceful nation-state had we not gone into Iraq I doubt. Afghanistan is going to be Afghanistan, no matter how hard we try to make it something else.
You could say that bad typography brought us the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, the housing crisis and a good number of other things.
There's a lot of money to pay for this ... the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years...We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.
When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.
If Afghan soldiers continue to kill American soldiers as is happening these days, it can hardly be assumed that they will stay in Afghanistan in the long term. And what role are they to play? There will not be enough soldiers to ensure the security of the country. But will the US still be permitted to kill terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan with un-manned drones? That could worsen the situation in the neighboring states and they could view Afghanistan as a threat.
There still aren't many black women on prime-time TV. Times are changing, but it's interesting: we're in 2013 and still experiencing firsts... Hopefully, in the next 100 years, things will balance even more.