"When I first read Ellison’s 1952 novel, it was as if somebody turned a bright light on in a dark corridor. That which I thought was so frightening, so terrifying, was just a shadow."

"I’ll give it a shot. “Favorites” questions are my least liked questions because I’ve never been any good at favorites. But I’ll give it a shot. I’ll probably disappoint every fan out there. The ones that stick out as being my favorites, most of them are from when I was young, because movies just meant something different to me when I was a kid than what they mean to me now. They still mean a lot to me, but also it’s, once you start working in the film business, your appreciation shifts. The Neverending Story, without a doubt. I loved that movie. I thought the girl in that was hot. I thought she was so cute. I was like, “I want to be her when I grow up.” Wear a necklace on my forehead and say, “Call my name, Sebastian. Call my name!” I remember, I was living on an island; we didn’t have a movie theater, we just had a town hall. Every now and then they would drop a big sheet and a projection thing. We’d sit on wooden chairs. So, The Neverending Story."

"I read every night. I do the Kindle thing. My wife bought it for me, and at first, I wouldn't use it because I'm such a book guy. I had to hide that I wasn't using it. After four or five months, she asked me what the deal was, so I tried it and now I read on it. Actually, I read the book on Kindle and then I also have a library in Seattle. So, I just finished Caroline Alexander's The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. It's really good. The Bounty was a merchant ship when merchant ships were not at all glamorous. War was glamorous. The story had a bunch of scarred-up dudes, and it was just interesting overall."

"Woody Allen — namely the Diane Keaton collaborative days — those movies were really important to me when I was like 15, 16 years old, because it was when I discovered watching them and went through the canon. I, for the first time, had seen a woman that I was like, “Oh, I can be that kind of a woman. I’m not really the nerd, I’m not really the charactery person. I’m not really the sexy one, but I am a neurotic, nervous, but semi-intelligent one, but I also say stupid things.” It felt comforting to know that that was an example of a kind of woman I could be when I grew up and when I was going through that transition in teenagehood."