"On my eighth birthday my mother gave me a hardcover copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The inscription read: ‘Here is the brother you said you wanted.’ I was having trouble in school—particularly reading—and a psychologist had recently tested me and informed my mother and the school that I was, in the parlance of the day, ‘retarded.’ My mother steadfastly refused to accept this, saying, ‘You just haven’t found anything you care enough about to read.’ It turned out I was dyslexic and perhaps mildly autistic. It took me months, and when I was done, I could read, and I had indeed been given a brother—two, in fact, and I have visited with them every year since my eighth birthday."

"Being a military historian, I was really blown away by the depiction that [Stanley] Kubrick had of trench life. But more importantly, I was immersed in the moral quagmire that Col. Dax, played by Kirk Douglass, experienced in the film. There’s a moment when somebody looks down at a cockroach and says, “You see that cockroach?” He says something like, “In an hour, he’ll have more relevance than I do.” And [another character] steps on the cockroach and says, “Not anymore.” Also, it was a very revolutionary shooting style that Kubrick presented, with his long tracking shots and his use of close-up wide lenses that I found very attractive. I first saw that film when I was a cadet at West Point."

"At first this book first gives you a ‘reader’s digest’ version of how the world leaders really were. That’s interesting enough. But it goes on to show you how the brain works when a person is depressed, and how to overcome it. It is fascinating and full of important information. I kept reading thinking “great to know the other side of our leaders we didn’t know.” But then, in the end, there is a surprise! It shows the current scientific findings of the link between depression and empathy, we knew only as a moral and idealistic trait. Now it seems they found a point of brain that corresponds to empathy, scientifically, which is connected to depression, its cause, and also as its cure."

"I heard the track 'Timing X' from that album when my friend played it at the 333 Club in Old Street. It was only a minute-and-a-half long, but it was just really funky and just very strange -sounding. That's why I bought the record. I found it at this little junk shop in Cambridge, and it was just very exciting to hear - it goes from this really aggressive mood to this disco tune. I liked how full-on it sounded. I remember watching videos of them live and admiring how confrontational they were, and they had so much energy - they'd always be right at the front of the stage. It was exhilarating music from an era where it just felt very adventurous."