"The English Patient I saw when I was really young, and the love story just devastated me, I think. You know, I was just sobbing. I loved it. Beautiful images. Something that can evoke that much emotion out of me — I was just really moved. So those are five that just come straight to the surface. You must get all kinds of people naming these obscure-ass movies though, right?"

"One of my favorite films from Jim Jarmusch; I can never get enough of it. Beautifully shot by Robby Müller in Louisiana, a jailbreak with Tom Waits, John Lurie, and the first time many of us were to see the amazing Roberto Benigni. The Defiant Ones meets the Marx Brothers and even better. Jim is one of the last true stylists left in this “sad and beautiful world.”"

"I remember reading this memoir some twenty years ago and thinking I had found a long lost childhood friend. With the language of a poet—both incandescent and glaringly fluorescent—Karr recounts sexual abuse, the charm and unreliability of her alcoholic father, and the emotional chaos of her brilliant, beautiful, and mentally ill mother. What emerges in memory is a meditation on truth found in love and self-knowledge."

"I was talking about this the other day. We were talking about best romantic comedies, and what falls into that category. The love story that develops between Andie MacDowell and Bill Murray is incredible. How they really do fall in love makes it a rom-com at its heart. Even though it’s this really high concept movie, it’s such a beautiful little love story at the same time. So good."

"This is the first book that has literally taken my breath away. I kept having to close it and breathe deeply, again and again. I read The Book of Longings right after my own book Untamed made its way into the world, and found Ana of Sue Monk Kidd's masterpiece to be a breathtakingly Untamed woman. This book—on women’s longing and silencing and awakening—is a true and beautiful masterpiece."

"It’s about Jen overhearing a conversation between her parents. Her mum had Alzheimer’s and she was asking her husband how they first met. He told this beautiful long story about how they started dating, what they were wearing, how they’d send each other love letters… and then five minutes later she said, “So how did we meet again?” It’s a bittersweet love song and is absolutely brutal on the heartstrings."

"I mean, Jesus Christ, it’s Madame Bovary. This is a novel that I adored when I read it. It was beautiful, scandalous, tortured and sympathetic. Then, while I was researching Guy de Maupassant for my first novel, The Clasp, I wound up reading a good deal about Flaubert as well. It’s impossible not to— the latter was the former’s mentor. So I have found myself revisiting Emma Bovary in recent years."

"[Solanas] wrote a very angry and very precise portrait of what she considered the male to be: something between a human and an ape; an unresponsive blob only concerned with physical sensation and without the capacity for empathy or self-knowledge or intimacy, and at the same time full of hatred and jealousy and shame and guilt. Her description is beautiful and on some level, I think, entirely accurate."

"I’d say Night of the Hunter. It’s an amazing film. That’s where the original “love” and “hate” tattoos on the hand came from. A lot of people don’t know that. You know, the good Christianity, the true Christianity, versus the false prophet thing that plays out in there, and the imagery. It’s an intense and beautiful film. And I love Robert Mitchum. I wish he’d come back to life"

"This movie (like, Badlands a movie that’s not on this particular list) is almost perfect. Not a wasted shot, piece of dialogue, moment, or frame. John Sayles has made some amazing movies but this is my favorite of his. A beautiful, forceful movie that tells a dozen different stories wrapped around one specific, true pivotal moment in American history. And every single actor is perfect and perfectly cast."