Your own experience keeps taking you towards something. My book adds the hope that it’s a better something.

I’ve never had issues with popularity. I was always a popular guy… I’ve always had friends and loved ones and everything, so it wasn’t like, ‘Oh man, I gotta fill some void that was left by high school.’ I had a great high-school experience.

It evolved from my experience in the fifties, growing up during the McCarthy era, and hearing a lot of assumptions that America was wonderful and Communism was terrible.

I loved making Pure Country. It was a great learning experience for me, seeing another part of the entertainment industry.

Dramatic experience is not logical it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.

My advice would be to write what is most personal and specific to your experience or your life. And your voice will emerge and because of its specificity, it will be universal.

I’ve had a lot of experience in independent film, and about how to choose. You’ve got to be very discerning about where you put your five bucks, and where you cut and what you don’t cut.

So if I have two pieces of cake, do I have twice as good an experience as the first piece of cake? One of the things I’ve found in life is that the first piece of cake is the best.

Succeeding is not really a life experience that does that much good. Failing is a much more sobering and enlightening experience.

Also, I knew that the impact of Motorcycle Diaries was going to be so resonant for all of us who went through the experience of making it that I didn’t want to do anything that could reflect it.