Quotes from Morgan Neville

Watching somebody sing reveals a lot about character.

If you're not doing it for the right reasons, then you'd be dumb to be making documentaries.

You make documentaries because you love doing it; it's the only sane reason to make documentaries.

In the late 1960s, English artists like the Rolling Stones and Joe Cocker began recording in the States, and at that point, they realised, 'We can get real African-American voices on our records; we don't have to pretend any more.'

The first night I met Yo-Yo Ma, I found him the most charming person I had ever met, and I was willing to follow him with the camera anywhere.

I would argue that the culture is not the frosting on the cake: the culture is the plate the cake sits on.

I feel like there's a lot of sympathy and camaraderie among documentary filmmakers.

Success and singing is not synonymous.

I so often doubt how much people on television believe what they're saying. They're playing roles for think tanks or political parties or shills of whatever stripe.

Politicians pretend not to be smart.

By the rules of debate, if you lose your cool, you've lost the game.

I feel like I'm in a privileged position where I get to meet people and talk to them about the most important things in their lives. I appreciate that trust they're putting in me.

I've produced two docs for Cameron Crowe, and I've always loved him as a filmmaker.

There was no model how to make a documentary production company work. I figured it out as I went along.

Being a backup singer means being able to sing on a dime. Music is oozing out of their every pore.

I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.

I could really sink my teeth into a David Bowie documentary.

I think, in the West, we often discount the arts as nice but not that important. Certainly in America when we cut funding for schools, the arts are the first programs to go. But the arts built the things we need more than anything else: collaboration and co-operation and creativity.

Everyone feels entitled to their own facts.

I think of myself as a cultural filmmaker.

TV tends to laud the person with the perfect one-liner rather than the one with the better idea.

I am a big believer in the power of journalism; it's a heroic pursuit.

I love documentaries. I love the format. I've been doing them for a long time.

They don't make people like Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley anymore.