"I saw this when I was very young. It was the first Fellini film I ever saw, and it is without a doubt my favorite Fellini film. There’s so much pathos in it. I love Nights of Cabiria, but for me this is Giulietta Masina at her best. Casting her as a clown—with her expressiveness and over-the-top facial expressions still feeling so grounded—combines realism and spectacle in one person. To me, that makes her one of the greatest of all time. When I can’t get to sleep at night and I don’t want to start a new book, I’ll put this on, and if I stay awake for the whole thing until five o’clock in the morning, I’ll be okay being tired the next day, knowing that I watched it."

"I saw this when I was very young. It was the first Fellini film I ever saw, and it is without a doubt my favorite Fellini film. There’s so much pathos in it. I love Nights of Cabiria, but for me this is Giulietta Masina at her best. Casting her as a clown—with her expressiveness and over-the-top facial expressions still feeling so grounded—combines realism and spectacle in one person. To me, that makes her one of the greatest of all time. When I can’t get to sleep at night and I don’t want to start a new book, I’ll put this on, and if I stay awake for the whole thing until five o’clock in the morning, I’ll be okay being tired the next day, knowing that I watched it."

"This novella is explicitly a book about ridicule and caricature—Professor Pnin is a joke of a man on a college campus. He’s an awkward Russian émigré with bad English, false teeth, a clumsy sense of humor, a tendency to burst into tears or take offense at small slights. Everybody on campus can do an impression of him. He’s a clown. But at the core of the book is the idea that there is a Pnin who is as real as the people who ridicule him. You are invited to laugh at him, and then you are humbled and shamed by your own laughter. It’s a gorgeous, hilarious, humane book that uncovers the reality of a man’s life in sly, piecemeal fashion. I think it’s my favorite novel."