"In the winter of 2005, I received Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook as a Christmas present. It was during my early, struggling-writer years, when I was working as a chef to support my family (and my writing), and I often wondered if I’d ever make it as an author. I remember sitting down on Christmas Day to read Keller’s book in my small apartment in Colorado. I was inspired by his love for cooking, his artistry and creativity, and his deep dedication to his art. The book was an inspiration to me to keep writing and pursuing my dream of publication, and I promised myself that when I published my first book, I would celebrate at one of his restaurants. Ten years later, I signed my contract for Children of the New World with Picador. This past November, I invited my family to Per Se as a thank you for all their love and support throughout my years of writing, and I lifted a glass in thanks to Keller."

"My old man got me into The Streets. I was quite young when they first came out and I remember him having them on in the car constantly. Original Pirate Material was a complete game-changer for me, I can recite that whole album word for word. ‘Blinded by the Lights’ was on the second album, A Grand Don't Come for Free, and I could probably recite that whole album as well, I think it’s one of the greatest concept albums ever written. “With ‘Blinded by the Lights’ I just love the tune, it really catches a theme and I can really relate to how he’s feeling in it. It’s that feeling of being pilled-up in a club, of losing control and not really knowing what’s going on, it’s a big tune. “I really like the storytelling element of it and that was an inspiration to me. Storytelling in a song is a complete art and I definitely don’t feel like I’ve managed to do it as good as this does, I don’t know if anyone ever will."

"One of my favourite voices of all time, guy or girl. I have a lot of respect for Siouxsie and she’s given me a lot of inspiration over the years. My sister and I used to listen to her a lot and just dance around. It’s all about the tone, there’s something about that band that’s pretty rare – something dark but also slightly poppy and accessible about their records. This is a song that my husband and I bonded over – we’d definitely heard it individually before, but one day we were just playing the album and that song stopped us in our tracks… played it on repeat for the whole night. I understand why some people can hear a little Siouxsie in what we do. I mean, when we started the band, everybody had grown up differently and we were coming from completely different musical backgrounds. Everybody brings in what they like, and although we may have similar tastes we’re all still coming from somewhere different. Hopefully we’re never considered strictly derivative of any one thing."

"This song was a sonic influence on the record. The vocal sitting on top of things that aren't a conventional band, with some electronic instruments, some keyboards and some beats. The voice is still the main focus, but there's stuff happening around it that isn’t conventional. It was definitely an inspiration to some of the songs on this record; it was like a sonic headspace. “I’ve been a fan of Arthur Russell for a long time. I don't remember who showed me him but maybe it was on a highschool mixtape. Sometimes you just hear somebody; you can tell that it's unique, it's interesting and you want to know more about it. “With 'Nothing Sacred / All Things Wild' for example, which is the third song on Oh My God, I first tried it with an acoustic guitar and it wasn't really working, but then when we used just an organ and my vocal and that seemed to really work. Something like that would be really influenced by something like Arthur Russell."

"I was thinking of different forms of inspiration and years ago, when I used to box, I had a heavy bag hanging in the garage of my house that I bought after I was inspired by "Peace of Mind." I would go out, and work, and do my TV shows, and do my radio shows, and do all that kind of stuff, where you’re sitting there with makeup on, and trying to hit your marks, and all that business. And then I would go home and I would crank in my mix cd and one of the songs was Midnight Oil’s “Blue Sky Mine”. And it just had such a strong drum beat that I would just go into this zone and just start pounding the body of that heavy bag to the beat of the drum. And it really just got me inspired. So, like I said, Boston was inspiring to get me into a career, and Midnight Oil was inspired for me to break someone’s ribs."

"Another imperfect perfect film that came slithering into my late-adolescent consciousness at just the right time. I was a disciple by the end of the opening titles (alone worth the price of admission). This thing is a bath of Cronenberg’s cold, polite, Torontonian style, and thus makes the story’s insanity that much more insane—the form of the movie pressure-cooking the content. And what better way to dramatically illustrate this repression explosion than a scene wherein Dr. Icy Veins himself, Jeremy Irons, pounces across an operating table in a spasm of drug withdrawal, belly flopping onto his unconscious patient to rip off her mask and suck anesthetic gas. This is a film featuring twin prescription-drug-addicted gynecologists dressed like Star Wars Imperial Guards who use H. R. Giger–esque, Josef Mengele–level–scary surgical instruments to operate on the “abnormal genitalia” of women they mistake for mutants. Now, if that’s not one for the whole family, well, I don’t know what is! (See Peter Greenaway’s A Zed & Two Noughts for obvious inspiration.)"