"During the 1960s I spent my time going to Hollywood movies, following the spirit of the Cahiers du cinéma. Written on the Wind is an explosion of cinematic style and of melodramatic excess. It stands for my love of Sirk but also for the extraordinary genius of all those 1950s directors whose careers came to an end before their time. And Sirk also leads forward to the great R. W. Fassbinder, especially to Ali: Fear Eats the Soul."

"I saw Le samouraï for the first time at Cinema 21 in Portland, Oregon, when I was a teenager. The main reason I went was because of an ad in the alternative weekly that said it was John Woo’s favorite movie (which meant a lot to me when I was sixteen). Over the last twenty or so years I have enjoyed it for many reasons: Alain Delon’s embodiment of cool, its evocation of 1960s Paris, its melancholy reflection on self-sufficiency and isolation."

"A haze-filled dream world of a novel about the survivors of nuclear fallout attempting to rebuild their lives and society. In my head, Fiskadoro mingled with old 1960s movie themes of young women growing up in small towns, wanting to leave their hometowns behind and be somewhere, anywhere, and someone, anyone, else. Maybe they’d glimpsed a highway billboard that advertised clothes, a car, a golden future, a possibility. Maybe, thanks to the machine of consumerism, they felt they were missing out on something they hadn’t even known existed."