"The album cover was worth the price of the purchase on its own. It was a highly influential record for me. I can remember being at a still life class in art school [Hornsey College of Art] listening to this. I learned every lyric on it. ‘In Every Dream Home A Heartache' is Ferry at his best. They were really hitting their stride here. Their attention to detail on the artwork was amazing. As I said, the album covers were as exciting as the records. To this day, there's a bar set when it comes to presentation, and Ferry set it."

"I moved off-campus after my sophomore year in college and had to feed myself. My quasi-hippie roommate gave me a copy of Francis Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, permanently changing how I thought about food and introducing selfish, cloistered little me to the notion of social responsibility. I became a vegetarian, learned to bake bread, and started a garden. My daughters’ friends used to call me Mrs. Nutritious—or Martha—and I loved it. Now, if I’m not writing, I’m either growing plants or cooking them. That slim volume revolutionized my life."

"I went to a college called the Drama Center, where we had nine main philosophies and were trained in all of them, but I still remember Mamet: “Nothing will sway me, nothing will go without me, nothing will stop me achieving what I have sworn to achieve; the repetition of this will teach in life that action is better than inaction, bravery better than cowardice, truth better than lies. Without this you add to the loneliness of an audience’s life, you add to their sadness.” I still read his books, but it’s all in this compilation."

"I never took any film classes back in college, but these are two that I saw by sneaking into different post-lecture screenings. A fascination with the power of the missing person has stayed with me. The dizzying number of overlapping layers—worlds, eras, sympathies, and attachments—has kept Rebecca one of my all time favorites. Joan Fontaine’s nameless character can seem pathetic at times—overwhelmed by an insane situation in her austere, claustrophobic, itchy wool outfits. But she can also feel as powerful as a five-alarm wake-up call from the present tense. (Yikes, especially if the present tense is 1940.)"

"I never took any film classes back in college, but these are two that I saw by sneaking into different post-lecture screenings. A fascination with the power of the missing person has stayed with me. The dizzying number of overlapping layers—worlds, eras, sympathies, and attachments—has kept Rebecca one of my all time favorites. Joan Fontaine’s nameless character can seem pathetic at times—overwhelmed by an insane situation in her austere, claustrophobic, itchy wool outfits. But she can also feel as powerful as a five-alarm wake-up call from the present tense. (Yikes, especially if the present tense is 1940.)"