Stephen Chbosky

Well, I think that part of being young is not exactly knowing why you do some of the things that you do. And it's by exploring your life or experimenting or making mistakes and learning from them hopefully that you start to forge an identity.

Rent' was a special project for me. It was my first notable screenplay job. I worked with two wonderful directors on it, starting with Spike Lee in the summer of 2001. I wrote a draft for Spike and he was really good to me.

When you think back to your first kiss, your hair is perfect and she was wearing a cool outfit. We remember it with restraint and we remember it with style. We remember it as idealistically as you can think.

If you are in a movie theater, you can look two people down and they are laughing while you are laughing or you can look three people down and they love that song that you love. It is living proof that you are not alone.

Harold and Maude' was a seminal movie for me because it's not only a beautiful love story, but it's also about the moment when misfits find each other.

Music is a vital part of my life, and it has been since I was a kid. It helped me find my identity as a person, it helped me find my identity as an artist, and it helped me get in touch with emotions that I didn't know I had.

I want to be an author/director and I'm writing my second book now and I want to make a movie of it, and I hope I get to do this for the rest of my life.

The girl that introduced The Smiths' song 'Asleep' to me was an important musical influence that I met in college. From there it's been an ongoing journey of different bands at different times, introducing bands and songs to me.

If the right thing came along, I would absolutely direct something I did not write because I love the process so much, but we'll see. I'm taking it day by day.

Rent' was wonderful in that I was able to adapt something that was beloved to fans, something that was very iconic, but something I had nothing to do with the creation of, so I was very removed. 'Perks' is different because it was my book.

As people get older, we all know, you get married and you have a child and that becomes your family, but when you're 16 years old, especially, your family is your friends.

Movies, by nature, are not subjective, they're objective.