"I don’t really read Stephen King—I just can’t read scary things because it stays with me too long—but I truly liked his memoir of the craft of writing. It’s the most accurate depiction of what writing is like and it’s not necessarily glamorous the way we’ve seen it on “Sex and the City,” where you sit down and bang out an article in 30 minutes. He’s good at mining his personal life and letting that inspire his creativity. That’s the ideal way to go about writing, to be informed by your life and use it in a way that can entertain other people."

"There’s never been anyone like Vertamae Smart Grosvenor, and there never will be. She is such an important source of inspiration for me, reluctant recipe writer and follower that I am. She’s spicy, saucy, sassy and silly, and her voice entirely her own: “When I cook, I never measure or weigh anything,” she wrote. “I cook by vibration. I can tell by the look and smell of it. Most of the ingredients in this book are approximate. Some of the recipes that people gave me list the amounts, but for my part, I just do it by vibration. Different strokes for different folks. Do your thing your way.”"

"Another movie that I absolutely loved, and I am a massive Queen fan, was Bohemian Rhapsody. I watched it five times at the cinema, and I cried every time. I grew up on Queen; my mom fed me Alan Jackson, Queen, Roy Orbison – all these incredible artists – and that’s what I still listen too now. Rami Malek was incredible. Like, I know hard it is to talk with a mouth guard in my mouth trying to play sports, so trying to then talk with a mouth piece that he would have had to create the look of the big teeth. I was just blown away. It was pretty incredible."

"My dad introduced me to cinema when I was a kid, to watch old films and foreign films, and so I think I was just touched by the idea of a young kid getting to know the projectionist in a village and falling in love with the world of cinema. I kind of related to that. And then I related to the idea of a kid’s passion for movies and eventually getting out and making movies himself. I like the idea of that. And the pacing of the film, and the beauty of the cinematography, and the relationship between the boy and the projectionist is very, very sweet and very touching."

"And then I’d probably say, to round it out, probably The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. First time going to see that — I remember going to see that. Or Rocky Horror Picture Show, we can make those tied. Finally when I got some wheels and could drive out of town, I would drive for hours and days to go see a movie. I would go to great lengths to see movies. One time I rode my bicycle for seven hours just to see Night of the Living Dead. I did it in the rain, like, “I’m going to see this f—ing movie if it’s the last thing I do!"

"And my third favorite is Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And I prefer the kind of dark cut — where the family is a little bit more “damned.” Richard Dreyfuss’ family — they’re a little bit more nagging, and it’s almost like they’re stepping on his dream and vision. They sort of become representative of a kind of bourgeois middle class America that doesn’t have any imagination and perhaps is even a little bit materialistic. It’s great. And in this one, I think it’s hinted that Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon do get together. I just love it. I love Close Encounters –– it’s magical. "