"It was just a very definitive moment in not only West Coast hip hop, but hip hop in general. It was a bridge - it was young hip hop with an old soul, which made it alternative. Rap was still fairly young at that point. I had a friend who was a very cool guy, he had the weed, and always had a demeanour about him - 'I know something you don't'. He had an advance copy, which made it even cooler. Almost every break beat there is is used on that album, which gives you an unwritten indication that anyone could have done it - but of course, that's not true. Technically, he started where we all had to start from, which is the bottom. That's what's cool about it."

"First is Say Anything…. In terms of protagonists it doesn’t get any better than Lloyd Dobler, and John Cusack is kind of like the Holy Grail in terms of awesome ’80s protagonists that are kind of lost and don’t know what they want to do. That great speech where he says “I don’t wanna sell anything… bought, sold or processed” or whatever — you know that scene? — it’s just kind of a genius way of describing what a character’s going through. Quite frankly my character in this movie is going through a very similar thing: clearly a smart guy, probably kind of paralyzed in life because he’s done it to himself. He’s kind of over-thinking everything, so the only thing he can think of is to do nothing and work at Sun Coast video."

"As counterweight to the weird and eerie elements in many of the books I have selected I propose the sweet and kind Summer Book. Tove Jansson’s fictionalized memoir about the summers she spent as a girl with her grandmother on a tiny island in the archipelago off Finland’s south coast is a wonderful ode to the curiosity of childhood and the wisdom of old age. In a precise, lyrical language that never gives in to easy sentiments Jansson allows us to take part in the summer days with the girl and the grandmother as one is discovering nature for the first time and the other is contemplating its vulnerability. It is sunshine in the shape of a book — for the shadowy part of Jansson’s oeuvre one must look to her children stories about the Moomins."