At the end of the day, what I show is real life. I tell the truth. And the truth can be shocking.

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

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.

My greatest lesson in composition was looking at paintings.

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.

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.

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.