I learned how to skate, I couldn't do the tricks, but I could certainly skate fast enough. I could keep up with anybody and I could bomb hills and I could hide behind my camera.

I tell people to frame the picture. Make the greatest, most perfect composition you can . . . and then take a step forward. It skews it a bit and makes it more interesting.

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.

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.

I've wanted to make a film about French youth since I went to Cannes with my first film 'Kids' in 1995 ... Scribe's screenplay is about French kids today, and the world today. Just like my films 'Kids' and 'Ken Park', this will be a movie like you have never seen before.

My favorite color is green.