"Badlands, I think is one of the best love stories of all time. I think it’s beautifully shot and I think Sissy Spacek’s flawless in it. I watched that movie and — you know when your hair stands up on your body and you can’t control it? — that movie really affected me quite deeply, and I cried at the end. I based a character that I did last year in this movie called Killer Joe on Sissy Spacek in that movie. It’s a big inspiration for me. I think it’s a flawless movie."

"My copy of Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself, an illustrated beauty of a book by Allen Crawford, which exquisitely spreads out Whitman’s famous Leaves of Grass poem over 234 pages. Its cloth-bound body was a gift from a friend who had been staying in Paris, and it bears a stamp from the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore situated on the Left Bank. The friend is a dear one who I barely see given our current geolocations, but the sort where years can pass and you can still converse as if it were yesterday"

"“I get what Bryan Ferry is trying to do – experimenting in a bizarre world and then couching what he finds in the style and language of the hunting set. It’s an exotic, intriguing concept and he’s the only one doing it. “This song [about a love affair with a blow-up doll] reveals a corner of your psyche that not many people would like to admit exists: that the mind wanders into dark places and the body follows. It’s a romantic delusion and it’s fascinating material for a song."

"I get what Bryan Ferry is trying to do – experimenting in a bizarre world and then couching what he finds in the style and language of the hunting set. It's an exotic, intriguing concept and he's the only one doing it. This song [about a love affair with a blow-up doll] reveals a corner of your psyche that not many people would like to admit exists: that the mind wanders into dark places and the body follows. It's a romantic delusion and it's fascinating material for a song."

"I would say The Gold Rush. I mean, I pick this one, but I love all the body of work of Chaplin. He takes some very dramatic moments or situations and he finds hilarious elements in it. And then, the choreography of the scenes is just amazing all the time. And I think the way he thinks influenced me. Not saying that I am Charlie Chaplin, but I think it was so inspiring – I watched all his films when I was very young, and I think it shaped my vision of film."

"This is a page-turner that begins with a magical premise—a mind born new right at the moment of a body’s death. We begin with death and move backward through a life, as seen through the ‘eyes’ of this new mind, and we track the actions of the character’s body through everything it did before it died. This is curious enough, but the mind telling the story understands the world backward, as if on ‘rewind.’ Does this make any sense? It does in Amis’s hands and has a bizarrely profound impact."