"I think it's the most singularly beautiful and sad piece of music ever written. I don't often listen to it - you need to treat it with respect. I've heard some people say that it changes your molecular structure when you listen to it - I don't know if that's true but it definitely does something to you that's special. I wouldn't have appreciated it when I was younger so it's a recent record that I love. All three movements in that symphony are incredible."

"This book is one of those beautiful accounts of a terrible time in our history. His calm and sagaciousness, while witnessing one horror after another played out during his time in three separate concentration camps, is awe inspiring. He speaks to the strength of the human spirit and there is a sentence in the book that made me put it down and think — ‘I stopped asking myself what I expected out of life, and asked myself what life expected out of me."

"This is the finest movie ever made about art and the romantic choices made by artists. I blame it only for the total crap it’s spawned on the same subject, some very recent. It’s almost too beautiful and too heartbreaking to think about, which only makes me want to stop typing and see it again. I know nothing about ballet or cinematography, but even I can tell when a movie is not merely a movie but an indelible imagination tattoo."

"Well recently I watched Grand Illusion, which I haven’t seen in several years — no, I’ll say another one instead: There’s one called Toni, that’s Jean Renoir before Grand Illusion, before Rules of the Game, and it’s set in the south of France and they’re Italian immigrants who’re working, who’re laborers working in the South of France. It’s very beautiful, kind of lyrical and very sad; a great Renoir movie. I don’t know if it’s seen that much anymore. It’s great."