"She's a later discovery. She's still alive – an amazing, iconic Italian pop singer from the late 1960s through the 70s and 80s, whom I discovered when I was dating a very handsome Italian man in Rome, driving around on the back of a scooter and listening to her recordings. I always identify her as the Bette Midler of Italy, she had a very similar fashion and look, this crazy curly red hair and amazing make-up. She also had this wild voice, and there's this glamorous European quality to her that she brings me right to when I need to get there, especially living in the United States. Mina, take me away!"

"Another instance of pleasurable re-reading. William Gaddis’ first novel, mid-1950s, The Recognitions, and I remember walking into a bookstore in Manhattan and being intrigued by the striking cover design, from a 15th century Italian altarpiece. The first paragraph knocked me out and I’ve been reading and re-reading Gaddis ever since."

"When I read the last page of this heartbreaking, funny, hopeful novel I went right back to the first page and read the whole book again! A beautiful movie star, a dreamy Italian man, a schlocky producer, an ambitious assistant, a rock star, a wannabe screenwriter, and Richard Burton all come together in the most winning way imaginable."

"That was the first movie that I saw that I felt really painted the picture of the gritty hardcore realities of the urban drug culture. Done in a way that made it palatable for mainstream audiences. It was glossy and it was like that black version of an Italian mafia film. But I dug it for those reasons."

"Early on, surprisingly enough, Italian cinema broke the Hollywood barrier by making simple, down-to-earth stories. Most of the films were made without live sound but dubbed later by experts. It meant that noisy, unblimped cameras would give flexibility to image-making. Stories like Bicycle Thieves, Rome Open City, and Paisan all fell into that category."

"All of my favourite films are approaching realism in a different way. This is Italian neorealism – obviously there’s a script and a story and everything, but it’s shot in the street and it has the feel of Italy, of being in the streets and, like Idaho, a deceivingly, simply constructed narrative. But there’s so much emotion that’s evoked from these very simple stories."

"This has got to be the most wonderful film about that transitional period that groups of close friends in young adulthood must go through as they accept more and more the responsibilities of maturity. There is so much spontaneous camaraderie, natural humor, truth, and, finally, Chekhovian sadness in this gentle masterpiece. Plus, those Italian slackers sure know how to dress!"

"The apotheosis of the Italian Western. Sergio Leone had been examining themes from the West of a number of pictures and here they coalesced into one poetic fable that is strikingly beautiful to watch and very moving. Again, it was not a success when it came out, and was brutally cut after a number of engagements, but now has belatedly been appreciated and restored."