Morgan Neville

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

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

“The best music films are not about music... Music is just the language we're speaking to tell a story about culture.”

“Music, like film, is an incredible tool for creating empathy.”

“To be a backup singer, you have to walk into any situation and just be perfect from the first take to the 50th take.”

“There's no cultural revolution by mistake.”

“I love Memphis, and just being there affects one's outlook.”

“In a weird way, our satirists probably have the most complicated, nuanced views of our politics now - Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver. I don't know what that says about our country.”

“Sometimes we have our perfect foils, or you can call them their bete noir: the person who brings out both the best and the worst in you because you disagree with them so completely. Yet, you understand and respect them enough to give it your all.”

“I think of myself as a cultural filmmaker.”

“If I told my 14-year-old self that I'd be hanging out with Keith Richards talking about records, my head would've exploded.”

“I'd worked on music docs for years. It felt like writing a novel. By the time I got to Keith Richards, it felt like making a sketch.”

“'The Sound of Silk' will serve as a lens for larger questions about cultural identity in a global society and the potential for individuals to act as catalysts for change.”

“Harmony singing isn't meant to be done alone.”

“When you come from a place and an identity, you can feel constricted and have to get away. But then you realise how much a part of you it is.”

“The easiest way to subjugate a people is to erase a culture. I've seen it in war zones.”

“Now, you watch cable news, and you know what everybody's going to say before they open their mouth.”

“Success and singing is not synonymous.”

“At the beginning of the '70s, everything was possible.”

“Like the ancient Silk Road itself, 'The Sound of Silk' will make the foreign familiar while challenging long-held notions of identity and our place in the world.”