"Again, I like this book for its willingness to embrace the tragic. No happy endings. The book is a defense of elitism, something I guess I oppose. But I found it credible, here."

"I cover this song quite a lot—I’m really into dumb, hook-y choruses. That’s my favorite thing about pop music, when a song is so dumb that it’s clever; ’I Want Candy’ is a perfect example of that. I also love the singer Annabella Lwin, how she was 15 years old and punk as fuck. I listen to this song before I go on stage, and it always makes me feel free"

"This film is my church. It’s the first Gus Van Sant film I saw, and I was blown away. He zeroed in on a subculture that I thought only I knew about. MOPI is a very ahead-of-its-time film, and I felt privileged to be able to participate with even a small commentary on the Criterion release. The film has never been more gorgeous than it is on the Criterion release"

"Several films by Martin Scorsese — I’m a huge fan of his — but at the top I would say Goodfellas, probably, as my favorite Scorsese film. That’s a movie that I always see when I feel that my imagination is kind of stuck and trapped, and I can’t think of a way forward. I watch Goodfellas and suddenly it frees me up entirely; it reminds me of what great film directing is all about."