"Edward Yang died way too young. Everything he did was wonderful, including Taipei Story and Mahjong, but these two are especially staggering. In both films he somehow manages to say just about everything you can about life without ever getting high-minded about it. Talk about an incredible craftsman! All of the stories being told in Yi Yi are kind of unremarkable—it’s the telling that is so remarkable. And A Brighter Summer Day is just an amazing gangland epic. I don’t know how you watch it without becoming convinced that you’re watching the greatest movie ever made. It’s like The Godfather in that way."

"Huge, magical, realist epic about Indian Independence through the eyes of a child born on the stroke of midnight. Funny, dense, flowery, the story goes on huge tangents, but I love this crazy novel, which somehow manages to depict and sum up the essence of the incredible vast country of India. A real education for me as someone who grew up in London, who had never been to India while growing up. This book helped me better understand what my parents had been through, where they came from before they chose to travel across the world to settle in the the U.K., where I was born."

"Oh, The Godfather. If it gets any better than that… I mean, it’s so beautifully shot. I’m not a fan of violent movies, but that one is such an epic film. The violence is part and parcel of the story they’re telling, so, it’s legitimate. In a weird way, I find there’s no gratuitous violence in it. Even though there’s a lot of shooting in that thing, every time there’s a shootout, I found it upsetting and horrifying as opposed to films which just trade on mowing human beings down. Those I find pornographic and not sad. I think it does damage to our society, personally."