You have Kurt [Cobain], and he's singing about your experiences. They're our collective experiences.

I try and make non-fiction films that feel like fiction, so I'm always looking for the subtext and that's what really excites me.

Sometimes, you chase the moment and you can never catch it. Films take so long to make that you can never anticipate what the cultural landscape will be when the film enters the world.

When I grew up, we had no babysitters and nobody every observed us. People don't parent like that today. They're very hands-on; kids are constantly being supervised.

Oftentimes when people make movies about the '80s, they go back and look at '80s films, [but] those look nothing like the '80s. It's some watered-down version of reality.

The only people who really love the '80s are millennials. We had Reagan and Bush for our entire youth, the culture was terrible, the fashions were terrible, the movies were terrible.

Everybody feels protective and possessive about Kurt [Cobain] , and I think that can be attributed to his unique gift, an ability to touch our lives, and make us feel like he's our friend.

You can't divorce yourself from your own life experiences.

I've never had access to another person's art and work or, particularly, someone who is as prolific and was able to externalize his interior world as deeply as Kurt [Cobain] could.

I never met Kurt Cobain, but I felt like I got to know him in a manner probably more intimate than anyone I've known outside of my family.

Kurt [Cobain ]was a feminist. A lot of the bashing against Courtney [Love] I think has to deal with gender bias and the media, and I think that he liked that she was taking the attention off of him.

The best place to look at failure is in the rear-view mirror.

Remember, every time you open your mouth to talk, your mind walks out and parades up and down the words.

I've been able to do what I love and what I'm passionate about my entire life. I made, you know, an insane amount of money playing baseball.

One of the enduring lessons of history is that whenever an empire becomes insular to 'protect' itself, intellectual decline and cultural intolerance are sure to follow.

Power tends to confuse itself with virtue, and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor.

You never know what you'll want to write until it starts writing itself in your head.

Humility is not something that comes naturally. But it is a cardinal virtue that should be pursued more than any other.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

Countless as the sands of sea are human passions, and not all of them are alike, and all of them, base and noble alike, are at first obedient to man and only later on become his terrible masters.

There are a lot of things that dancers can do that actors cannot and actors can do that dancers cannot.