Matthew Modine

"When I was a boy I dreamed of sailing and exploring the the open seas. I know my inspiration arose from watching episodes of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. This almanac was the first gift I received from my then girlfriend, now wife, and why I still love her. She saw my passion for the ocean and presented me with a book by my hero. Cousteau gives many examples of how we have been destroying our shared environment for thousands of years. But more importantly, he always leads us to solutions we can implement to save and restore our planet. “We have one planet. We have to take care of it.”"

"Leave it to the Dr. to make simple sense of human stupidity. Like Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece Dr. Strangelove, the story is about the real possibility of mutually assured destruction from the use of nuclear weapons."

"Okay, yeah, I did play Birdy in the film directed by the always amazing Sir Alan Parker. If you saw the movie, you should read the book. The hypnotic magic of Wharton’s prose is pure poetry. After you read the book, watch, or re-watch the film and see how right we actually got it."

"This is collection of Vonnegut observations that will make you mourn his passing. We need a new Vonnegut today to make sense of the utter nonsense we’re living through. A writer with his obstinance, humanism, wit and wisdom."

"Here we are. Top of the heap. 8 billion people crawling on every piece of earth available. Early humans learned that through cooperation they could, say, travel off our planet and walk on the moon. The question now is, can we survive another millennia? With all of our technology, science, medicine, an ever exploding population, and an unending appetite for a finite amount of earthly resources, will we survive much longer?"

"How can you not love the old fisherman, Santiago, and this great sea story by ol’ man Hemingway. Ernest won the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes for his efforts with this book. In many ways, the story echoes Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. But Hemingway takes the reader much deeper into the personal journey of man vs. nature. Through Santiago we are reminded of humility and the fragility of life. So vulnerable we are in our little boats floating in a universe unimaginably large and benign to the desires or passions of human ambitions."

"Observations about life from a Roman emperor from almost 2,000 years ago. Remarkably fresh, simple, and pertinent. Filled with rational emotion and practical aphorisms. When I read this the first time, I felt like I was receiving loving guidance from a dear friend. The writing is that simple and relatable. Seriously, Marcus was an emperor, and you never feel like he’s talking down to the reader!"

"Alright, I said before that I missed Vonnegut. Well, Don DeLillo isn’t Vonnegut. And he’s not trying to be. He’s like Vonnegut and is an equal wordsmith. DeLillo is also a brilliant observer of life with a deliciously wicked sense of humor. He understands how best to employ irony and uses it to point out our collective anxieties and the absurdities of contemporary living. DeLillo is the shit."