I started writing [Beginners] five months after my dad passed away. And I’m in this crazy grief world, which makes me really brave, and I’m willing to talk about anything that I can to the world, about humanity, which sounds pretentious. But I’m like: “Why not? What else are we here to talk about?”

Mike Mills, in Melena Ryzik, “American Masculinity, Shown in All Its Angst”