"What else comes to my mind? Bicycle Thieves was always one I loved, too. Again, deeply moving, operatic Italian story. Impossible to see the film and not weep. The simple life of people just trying to get through the day in very hard times. High unemployment after the second world war — a bicycle is the ticket out of unemployment and poverty. That’s a film that also still works. I see it every couple years. I look at that again."

"I discovered this series at a small gay bookstore when I was living above a hardware store in San Diego in the ’80s. I read the first book in 24 hours straight, no sleep. Then I devoured every other novel in the series — all of them — in one day each. If I had to Sophie’s Choice pick only a couple, I would say the first novel and “Babycakes,” topped only by “Maybe the Moon,” his unrelated tome."

"Right? So this is a love story about a summer fling. It incorporated music and dance into a story that rang of nostalgia and the world as it used to be, which seems so different, and yet the emotions that all of the characters experience — from the couple that falls in love, or the parents or the sister — they all ring with authenticity. It all comes together in a way that is both memorable and moving."

"Reality check. The last time I saw it was with my wife and several friends. We are all about the same age, have elderly parents, or have lost our parents in the last couple of years. After the movie, we talked about our parents and how we had treated them. Everyone felt guilty for days. I studied the disc of documentaries, and treasure the Ozu films in my collection. “Real life intrudes just when you’re making other plans.”"

"I enjoy sci-fi thanks to my brother John's passion for it, and this was the first sci-fi book to hit my radar. It touches on so many things: politics, religion, paganism, revivalism, psychokinesis – and it even introduced a couple of things that didn't exist before: the waterbed (which came out a few years after the book), and the word "grok" which means "to understand something intuitively or by empathy.” There's a lot to grok in this book."