"Cronenberg is a good example of a director who has often made my favorite kind of film: a genre movie that feels profound. I haven’t seen The Brood in a long time, but I remember how it excited me. He wrote it too, as he will, and it’s low budget, which is a virtue, and it’s a horror movie that ingeniously presents the idea of extreme human emotion becoming personified, in a strong metaphor for how life can feel. Maybe that’s already a spoiler. I’ll stop, except to say that perhaps an even greater instance of a profound genre flick from Cronenberg is The Fly."

"This may not just be my favorite Dickens novel, but my favorite novel period. I read it regularly, and every time is an undimmed pleasure. More, every time it feels fresh. That is the mark of greatness. Although the comic characterization is as juicy as ever, and it’s impossible to read without laughing out loud, Dickens here gives the fullest expression—through the hero who tellingly bears, if back to front, his initials—of horror at the heartbreak, savagery and injustice of the world. It is the ultimate bildungsroman and the truest story of how a person comes to be. Not for nothing was it Freud’s favorite novel."

"Still with the Italians, I’m sorry! With many things in life you’re there because there’s a cute girl around that you want to go out with and you end up finding magic. You end up not caring about the girl but wanting to stay there because of what you found. That happened with Amarcord to me. I really thought a lot about creating images and the connection that cinema had with theatre in a way. That film feels a little bit like theatre. I lived all my life watching theatre and it’s when I found the connection with what I was watching and could do in my life."