"Eastern Sounds is historically a very important record for me because it contained a riff, which I stole for what was to be my first hit single, ‘I Love My Dog’! I just couldn’t get that melody out of my mind! Eventually I wrote my song based on this record and thought nobody would find out. Later I owned up to it and paid Yusef his royalties for that song. Interestingly he also took his name from the Prophet Joseph/Yousef. We both embraced Islam, but he converted much earlier than I had, I didn’t think about religion at the time."

"Lily King has a brand-new book just published, and it’s probably wonderful, and I’ll read it soon. But Euphoria is the one I’ll always go back to. This re-imagining of Margaret Mead in the midst of a jungle and a love triangle, both steamy, is almost Joseph Conrad-like in its explorations of the human heart and brain. Maybe not relaxing-in-the-hammock reading, unless the hammock is caught up in poisonous vines with a snake or two curling in wait, but this book does in fact grab and hold on to the reader."

"“In what ca-TEG-ory would you put Mr. James Joyce?” Or, for that matter, this film? Among other things, I’d call it the best gangster picture ever made. Orson Welles got the most mileage from it (including a radio spin-off that recast the swinish Harry Lime as a good-natured rogue), a renown I find difficult to fathom, given the superb ensemble work by Joseph Cotten, Trevor Howard, Alida Valli, Bernard Lee, Wilfred Hyde-White, and a doctor who pronounces his name VINK-el. Carol Reed’s direction makes the most of every incident, and the whole package is tied up with one of the best musical scores ever."

"Jules Dassin was an American filmmaker who moved to Paris to escape Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the rest of the HUAC thugs. In the City of Lights he managed to make the most French gangster film and best heist movie ever. The actual break-in and robbery scene (based on a real burglary in Marseille at the turn of the century) happens over an astoundingly tense twenty-six minutes of silence. It is unforgettable. Dassin himself plays the role of the Italian safecracker Cesar under the pseudonym Perlo Vita and showed himself to be as adept in front of the camera as he was behind it."

"One more. How about another film that Joseph and I were talking about last night, which is a wonderful film: Sunrise by Murnau. It’s a silent movie — I think it’s from 1927, something like that. And it’s one of the most beautifully shot movies you’ll ever, ever see. Just the pinnacle of silent film art photography. Deep emotions of, again, almost operatic story. There’s a lot of nature in it, there’s a lot of water, fire, sunrises, and sunsets that are connected to the story. Human emotions and consciousness and yearnings and failings and karma. It comes from a short story, and a very beautiful film."