"We watched The Landlord together. It was sent to us by Sam Mendes before Away We Go was being filmed. We had told Sam about our love of Hal Ashby and some of his other films, and Sam was also an Ashby fan. That was kind of our common entry point, and the reason we knew we were in such good hands with Sam as director was because he was seeing the same references we were [seeing] and had the same idea for the look and feel of the movie. He sent us The Landlord and we watched it together and we loved it. The color and the tone, and the fact that it was a real movie taking place in a real specific time."

"It was a struggle for me to choose just one Louis Malle film, so I chose two to count as one. This one is particularly exceptional, thanks in part to the amazing performance by Maurice Ronet. Pushed by Malle to lose forty pounds, Ronet gave a hard, hopeless portrayal of a despondent and suicidal man saying good-bye to his disdainful and shallow youth. Though he originally shot the film in color, Malle switched to black and white to more accurately depict the subject matter. Listening to the commentary, I learned that Malle used this film as a sort of exorcism for himself, feeling that he had already done everything at such a young age. Deeply personal, it was his favorite of his own films."

"It’s almost like these three sisters are a part of my family... I grew up in Sweden (New York, too, and by the time I read this book, was making my own life in London in my late teens). The world around me was not exactly celebrating cultural diversity... this book, and books like “The Color Purple,” “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and “Beloved,” took me by the hand, held me, beckoned me into womanhood, aroused a love of my heritage, and love for myself. I ate this book in one serving. It was passed down my by mother... again, I’ve given it to my daughters and waited, impatiently, to talk to them about it as they’ve read."