"Wildness and control are recurring themes in Phillips’s brilliant poems, and they play out too in his winding, meticulous, everywhere self-interrogating syntax. He is our metaphysical poet, using the desiring, sexual body to ask poetry’s eternal questions in distinctively contemporary ways"

"In my personal canon, Frank Bidart is the gold standard, the most important living American writer. His discomfiting poems delve into extremes of emotion that would defeat almost any other writer. Fearless, brilliant, they remind me what the stakes of art should be."

"First of all, it’s just a brilliant play, and then seeing the film and seeing those incredible performances and direction — it’s just one of those films. I first saw it when I was 15 or 16, and I decided to be an actress."

"I could watch the work of Wong Kar-wai (and the brilliant cinematographer Christopher Doyle) all day long. I don’t have to understand what’s going on . . . I don’t care. Beautiful people, photographed beautifully. His films are the best, most romantic out there."