Teenagers all think their life is a movie. If you break up with someone or you have a fight, you walk around with movie scores playing in your head. You sort of see yourself suffering as you're suffering. There's a lot of melodrama attached to the real events of your life.

Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves.

Most of us were probably less than immaculately honest as teenagers; it's practically encoded into adolescence that you savor your secrets, dress in disguise, carve out some space for experiments and accidents and all the combustible lab work of becoming who you are.

Teenagers, especially girl ones, seem like the perfect canary-in-the-coal-mine characters to me. They capture American culture and its perversion, its hypocrisy - how absorbed we are with youth and beauty and sexualized imagery, for instance, while preaching abstinence and modesty.

Teenagers today are more free to be themselves and to accept themselves.

I'm a teenager, but I'm independent - I have my own apartment, I have my own life. And I think I have learned more than any of those teenagers have in school. I learned to be responsible, leaving my family and coming here alone.

Many filmmakers portray teenagers as immoral and ignorant, with pursuits that are pretty base... But I haven't found that to be the case. I listen to kids. I respect them... Some of them are as bright as any of the adults I've met.

I missed out on everything. Sometimes on the street I see teenagers hanging out and going to the movies, going to concerts, and I get so jealous.

Teenagers only have to focus on themselves - its not until we get older that we realize that other people exist.

We have a special and strong teamwork because we trained together as teenagers and have grown together since then. Now, we can just look one another in the eye and know immediately what they need or how they feel.

Teenagers are like atoms when they're moving at hundreds of miles an hour and bouncing off each other. Everybody's got such a crazy hormonal drive and reacting to each other differently and getting upset over little things. High school puts all these potential explosions in one place.

I think the stuff that plays on the radio, the majority of it is for teenagers, which is okay. That's what pop radio is about. And some of it is great, and some of it is not.

Teenagers watch and listen to all kinds of things. It is the nature of being a teenager to seek out intense stuff. Stuff about death and sex and love and fear. Teenagers are the bravest, most curious, most philosophical, most open-minded readers there are, which is why so many less-than-young adults like writing for them.

I think it's becoming very acceptable for adults and teenagers to be playful lifelong. You know, it's very acceptable to be a video gamer and be 35 years old. It's acceptable to be a Lego adult fan and build amazing things, even though you're 40 or 25 years old.

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

Well, I'll tell you, I don't know how aware teenagers are of me. I think it really depends on the teenager and how well-versed in music they are and what kind of music they like.

Teenagers are philosophers. They are thinking about the big things like existence and identity at a time when their identities are changing so fast.

I play in Metallica, and I have fun in Metallica. I tell you, I am the luckiest man on the planet because we have a good time and we're happy. When we put on our guitars, we're teenagers again, and that's where the fun comes in.

I think the hardest part about being a teenager is dealing with other teenagers - the criticism and the ridicule, the gossip and rumors.

My best man was my best friend of almost 20 years, Matt Ryan. He actually plays John Constantine on the new NBC show 'Constantine,' but we've been friends since we were teenagers.