"It’s very hard for me to pick a favorite Douglas Sirk movie, but ultimately it’s this one, a sumptuous tearjerker with Sirk’s signature cultural critique. The moment when Jane Wyman, after sacrificing her own happiness for her children, receives a television set as a Christmas gift in lieu of their presence shatters me every time. No one understood melodrama like Sirk, or how to sharpen it into the dagger it’s meant to be."

"Perhaps the volume that influenced me most was called The Miracle of Life. I spent hours poring over the small print of those magical pages. It was not a book written for children, but I was absolutely absorbed as I learned about the diversity of life on earth, the age of the dinosaurs, evolution and Charles Darwin, the early explorers and naturalists — and the amazing variety and adaptations of the animals around the world."

"The two supreme works of childhood/horror. Lamentations of worlds lost and the innocents trapped in them. Sublime fairy tales of despair that depict the adult world as a toxic environment for kids to exist in. Secret treasures kept in the hearts of children must be safeguarded from the corruption of an adult world full of certainty and arrogance. Both films are so beautiful and so dark—they truly make me weep in awe."

"The two supreme works of childhood/horror. Lamentations of worlds lost and the innocents trapped in them. Sublime fairy tales of despair that depict the adult world as a toxic environment for kids to exist in. Secret treasures kept in the hearts of children must be safeguarded from the corruption of an adult world full of certainty and arrogance. Both films are so beautiful and so dark—they truly make me weep in awe."

"Francis Poletti writes books for children, but her stories are for everyone. They’re stories about women in history who were the first to achieve something, and what they had to battle against at that time, and how they preserved and pushed through and ended up achieving their dreams. “The Girl Who Ran,” is about a young heroine who is told that women can’t run, that running is against the rules, but she does it anyway."

"I tell these as goodnight stories to my children when we are on the train, or going somewhere at night. “The Necklace,” is particularly wonderful. I bought these at Shakespeare & Co., where they always had contemporary writers staying above the shop, and they’d solicit recommendations from them. This was one of them. It’s interesting what sticks with you. I read many classics as a child, but these are the ones that linger."