"The last film I would say — and I could pick many of his films, but I will choose Woman Under the Influence, by Cassavetes. I could also have said Faces, or I could have said The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, or Husbands, or Minnie and Moskowitz, or I could have said Love Streams, but — today it will be Woman Under the Influence. I love the structure of it; its two-part structure — it really feels like a film in two movements. Arguably the two greatest performances of all time, between Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands. You know, it’s a home movie, and everything I’ve been trying to make are home movies — movies that take place inside the house and the family. I love the spirit of Cassavetes’ films, in that he’s casting his wife and his best friend in the roles, and his mother and her mother are in it, and the kids. To me it’s a movie that changes, too, throughtout the course of my life. I know the movie isn’t changing, I’m changing; but when I watch it the movie seems to shape-shift. I remember the first time I ever saw it I thought she was crazy; I remember on the 50th time I watched it I thought she was the only sane person in the movie and everyone else was crazy. I love that about movies that are made with a certain openness — that the audience can kind of participate in the imagination of the characters, you know; of their lives and of the story."

"I have seven older brothers and sisters so there was always a bunch of records around the house. One of my brothers had a record by The Sonics, a Seattle sixties garage rock band, and to a kid who was, like, eight years old, The Sonics really spoke. It was very trashy and you could almost imagine yourself playing those songs - there was a song called 'The Witch' that really spoke to a boy that age and captured his imagination. I was probably about 13 when I heard Raw Power and it reminded me of that, but had something else, it was a bit rattier. I played it over and over again. I haven’t ever been able to write a song as cool as any on Raw Power but I did take that basic ethos; keep it raw and keep it real. Those formative years and the records I listened to then have influenced me to this day. We covered [the song 'Raw Power'] later on ""The Spaghetti Incident?"" [Guns N’ Roses’ 1993 cover album] , and in that era of my life – wow, I guess I’m speaking about my life in eras now – I was probably... well I had a lot of input in that record. I’m not saying I had the most influence, but I probably had more than my share. The UK Subs and the Stooges, I was really happy about some of the selections we made and it was really fun to do something like a Damned song. So we’ll move onto...."

"All bands develop over time, and I'm definitely an old school Metallica fan. Those first three albums are about as good as it gets really. I really enjoyed the track 'One' on this record. It was a really complex piece of work. And that story of the guy who's come back from war and has lost his arms and legs and everything was just really dark and sombre. It was just a very strong political statement and that caught my imagination. I love those first three Metallica records, but I chose ...And Justice For All because of the overall complete experience of the album. This album shows the very first signs of Metallica being adventurous with their sound, and it has a great confidence to it. I've always admired them because they've always just been themselves, by themselves. They just do exactly what they want to do and I'm very excited to know exactly what this next one is going to sound like, even though Kirk [Hammett, Metallica guitarist] has dropped some hints that it won't sound like this record. But, y'know, everybody wants them to do Ride The Lightning again in the same way that everybody wants Priest to do Painkiller again. I don't think that some people understand that it's difficult to get things right for you as a band at the same time as trying to please your fans. I know from experience that you need to let your heart lead you, which is why I'm so interested to hear this new material."

"I know these are things that go back in time, but now coming up to date, we got 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, the projecting forward of Arthur C. Clarke was just such a marvel of imagination, but not just guessing. I mean, he predicted that communication satellites would rotate at the same rate that the earth rotates. They’re in orbit traveling, so they sort of remain stationary over the equator. Now, that was a brilliant observation, and I think so many of these people — Isaac Asimov and H.G. Wells, all of these science fiction writers. In a way, it prompted me to think about creating imaginary situations in the past, in the present, and off into the future, being as true to reality as possible. It also predicted things that we would call today… It’s a cable that goes all the way up and out to geosynchronous. And that has fascinated a lot of people, and I’ve appreciated some engineering observations that I think were quite impractical, but Arthur Clarke projected building a tower all the way out there. 22,000 miles. Now, that’s pretty stretching. But I feel very satisfied since Arthur Clarke wrote an epilogue to the book that Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and I wrote with other people, First on The Moon, and Arthur Clarke wrote the epilogue to that. And because of his contributions and my appreciation of those and having met him on several occasions, I just was compelled to arrange a cruise so that I would get to spend a day with Arthur Clarke in 2001."