When I was growing up, all the films about teenagers were played by Tony Curtis or John Cassavetes when they were 27, 28 years old. We would see these teenage movies in the theaters and I would say, "They don't look like they're my age at all." So I wanted to make a movie that was real and I wanted to make a movie that wasn't about me.

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

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.

[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.

I am a storyteller. I've never been interested in just taking the single image and moving on. I always like to stay with the people I'm photographing for long periods of time.

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.

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.