"The autobiographical essays in this collection cover faith and family, booze, men, and self-love. They’re full of the small moments in Lamott’s life, the observations that make you laugh really hard and make you bawl really fast—two of my favorite activities. She talks about how the most popular prayers are ‘Help me, help me, help me’ and ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ I’ve read all her work, and she continually surprises me and speaks to me. One of the lines from this book that I love is: ‘All you can do is show up for someone in crisis. Your there-ness…can be life giving, because often everyone else is in hiding.’ That’s just killer."

"Shawshank Redemption, because I love that it is about the power of the human spirit. That movie is one that I watch when I think about giving up. And that’s rare. I don’t do that anymore, but when I was first starting out in this industry, I would use that film as a metaphor for life because it was really hard and I was getting told “no” by all the studios and [wondered] if I would ever be a successful filmmaker. I would literally look and I would say, “If [Andy Dufresne] can survive and go through all that and keep his spirit then so can I, dammit [laughing].” That’s one of my favorites."