"My late father’s favorite movie. The film is disturbing on so many levels: the fact that it was made during the Occupation; the way theater and real life are layered and confused; the performance by Arletty, who would later be convicted as a collaborator. She notoriously justified her treason by saying, “My heart belongs to France, but my ass is international.”"

"“I read it when I was 14 on holiday with my family in the south of France. I just remember it was the first thing that I read that sounded as disillusioned as I felt at the time. Everyone else had been either quite grand or classical, and this was the first of the modern American writer genre that I’d read.”"

"Any Marine who has not read Lucas Phillips’ book The Greatest Raid of All should. This is about the raid that shattered the dry dock at Saint-Nazaire, France, so that Bismarck would never have a place to be repaired if they went out to sea. You see how you can apply strategy to operations to the tactical costs and all."

"I discovered this book at 15 at a time when society’s view of the gay world was fugitive criminal. Looking thru Genet’s poetic eyes into queer life in France grounded in criminality, in the margins of humanity was a both a validation of the people I was meeting, with their fierce sense of self identification and a window into my future in the NY Underground."

"I saw this film when I was a teenager, and it had a lasting impact on me, having been a fan of hip-hop but being largely unaware of the social conditions in France that made hip-hop culture so powerful there. There’s a scene in particular I have fond memories of in which Cut Killer is deejaying above the streets of his banlieue. So good."

"I don’t know if you know this but I’ve found that if you sat at a table with eight or nine of the worlds best chefs — from France, Brazil, America, wherever — and you asked them where they’d choose if they had to eat in one, and only one country, for the rest of their lives, they would ALL of them pick Japan without hesitation. We both know why."