"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"

"Les Quatre cents coups, better known as The 400 Blows, a film that every man can relate to, because every man once was a boy. It also bears the historical importance of being among the first films of the Nouvelle Vague, along with Breathless. [The last shot] is one of the few freeze fames that I think really works in the history of film. When you do a freeze frame, you have the opportunity to find the exact shot that you want — no guessing. And [director Francois Truffaut] used it to the full effect."