If you've seen my books through the years, I've always been a storyteller.

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 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 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. Over the years, the work has changed for me. I know that I have wanted to repeat myself, but I can't. I've been lost a lot of times, but then I'd just get an idea and photograph it. Once I'd started, I'd know exactly what would go down and how it would end. So I just quit doing it, because it loses all interest for me when you know what's going to happen.

I always felt that when I was photographing, I had a psychic need to see this, to photograph this. And I think if somebody else had been doing this work, and if I could have seen these pictures anywhere at all, then there would have been no need to make them.

I've been a photographer for my whole life and I've done everything with photography that I felt I could do, and I always wanted to be a filmmaker.

[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.