"When read aloud, this play—which takes place during the course of one night in the life of a mother whose daughter wants to commit suicide—is like a poem. Although technically not a book, the journey I made with this Pulitzer Prize-winning play affected my life in a deeply personal level. When my 83-year-old father was facing a leg amputation due to diabetes, he attempted suicide. Naively, I tried to encourage him to hang on to life. He replied, “You know how I feel. You’re doing that play.” The role of the daughter, Jessie, was originally written for a dear friend, Susan Kingsley, but she never wanted to be a “Broadway star.” She wanted to stay home with her babies and her husband on their pig and tobacco farm in Kentucky. In 1984 she was killed in an automobile wreck. Marsha’s play was a major turning point in my career, but I would have given it all up, if Susan had been in the play instead of an icy road in Georgia."

"That was one of the 50 albums my mum played all the time when I was a little kid - that is just so deep in my subconscious that I can't even describe what it is I feel when I hear her singing. I remember coming back from college and playing some Laura Branigan for Chris Keating or some friend and them just thinking it was second rate Donna Summer, which it probably is. But I'm like, "Don't you hear the emotion in her voice - it sounds like she's crying!" That was the kind of over the top but still sincere genuine passion I wanted to get on 'Hold You Tight' from the musical. All the reviews of the musical are very critical of this one song, which is probably one of my favourite songs, because it actually sounds like it could be from a musical. It's very Broadway and not very indie rock at all, and I kind of wish we'd been a little less conservative in just going for it. 'Self control' is a timeless theme. Keep it under control in the day and let loose at night."

"It’s difficult to pick a Woody Allen film. In terms of my favorite person who’s been in a film it would be Woody Allen, so therefore it feels that I’ve got to pick a Woody Allen film. I think he’s the best performer that’s ever been in films, in a way; certainly sound-era films. Just his voice is the best voice that has ever been recorded, I think. Even if he had just been a writer of comic prose, he would have been one of the best writers of comic prose. His best films have so much life to them, and they’re funny. I know he often has a low self-estimation of them publicly, but Crimes and Misdemeanors, in terms of his feeling that he hasn’t made a film as good as Rashōmon or Bicycle Thieves — I think it’s definitely a film that could be held up with those films, really. It’s just very brutal, but funny as well. Just everything: the music, that professor and how kind of depressing it is, but how many great lines it has. And such a good cast: everyone’s really suited to his style. Not every actor is suited to being in a Woody Allen film. Seems like Owen Wilson is really suited to it [in Midnight in Paris], from what I’ve seen, in the same way that John Cusack was so good in Bullets Over Broadway. For me it’s just infinitely rewatchable."