I just happened to have my camera and be photographing my friends. It was totally innocent; there was no purpose to the photographs. There was a purity to them that wasn’t planned; it was realism.

I think the reason why I never wanted to do a retrospective is because I was scared to go back and look at all this stuff through the years.

I was over self-medicating back when I was a kid and didn't know it.

If you're going to photograph skateboarders you can't run after them, you've got to learn how to skate. So at about 50 years old I learned how to skate, and skate fast enough to keep up with them and hold my camera.

When I started shooting speed, amphetamine, when I was 15, almost 16, it actually calmed me down.

[Eugene Smith] was always writing these diatribes about truth, and how he wanted to tell the truth, the truth, the truth. It was a real rebel position. It was kind of like a teenager's position: why can't things be like they should be? Why can't I do what I want? I latched on to that philosophy. One day I snapped, hey, you know, I know a story that no one's ever told, never seen, and I've lived it. It's my own story and my friends' story.

For me there are no rules. I think I learned that from artists-from painters and sculptors. It took photography a while to catch up to them.