"I have had Patti Smith's 'Just Kids' on my bedside forever. [Vogue US] She describes a recent turning point when she read Just Kids, Patti Smith’s 2010 memoir, in which she writes of discovering that her true calling lay in “three chords merged with the power of the word.” Smith’s willingness to embrace the highs and lows of a creative life touched something in Emma. “I want to live like Patti. I want to write like Patti,” she says. “The book was so honest and brave. I loved the way she sees the world. I really felt that life was more beautiful after I read it, and I felt more hopeful."

"I really, genuinely don’t like favorite lists because you always leave stuff out. So there are a lot of important films I could put in like The Godfather Part II, perhaps, or The Godfather Part I, but I’m going to go with The Empire Strikes Back for number three only because it’s Empire Strikes Back! I don’t think I need to say why. It’s so good. It takes what arguably could be just a simple science fiction movie and really takes it to this other place that is just so engaging and so believable and dramatic as well. Not overly dramatic, but dramatic. I love that film a great deal."

"I heard about them initially via the NME, and Melody Maker– all those great music newspapers that were there back in the day. My best friend was also into them at the same time and we just became strangely obsessed, very quickly. 
 When they first emerged, I was very active in the club scene; I was always going out every night and I just had this incredible connection with that record. That whole scene that came out of Manchester at that time – the Happy Mondays, the Stone Roses – it just blew my mind. It was a sort of brand new sound that really captured my imagination. 

 Every time I hear that record now, I just get flooded with feelings of pure joy and freedom. I became so, so obsessed with Ian Brown that it was bordering on the unhealthy. 

 They're an amazing band and I still have so much love for them. I was lucky enough to meet Mani and Ian over the years, either on television shows or at festivals. I met Mani at this amazing festival in Spain, in Bilbao: I was literally like a love-struck teenager, except I wasn't [laughs], I was an adult. I was so thrilled to meet him and to play on the same festival line-up. 

 It wasn't until much, much later that somebody told me The Stone Roses had actually opened for my very first band – Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – but I had been completely unaware. It felt like great justice that with the success of Garbage that I finally got to be on the same stage and be aware of it at the same time: it felt like an amazing achievement. 

 In some weird turn of events, me and Ian got stuck together backstage in this mad situation – I think it was in Serbia, of all places, during a thunderstorm. The festival that we were all playing had to get postponed until the storm passed. We were all backstage getting drunk together and I could just not believe that that actually happened: I still can't. It just shows you that dreams can come true, so to speak [laughs]."

"Indiana Jones, that trilogy I just rewatched on a plane from a holiday I just took. I watched all three, and Temple of Doom just continues to win me over. I know; usually, people like The Last Crusade, and there’s a lot of love for Raiders, because it’s the original. But Temple of Doom is just, to me, so funny and entertaining and fun. And the kid from Goonies — Hot Shot? Short Round. He’s so funny, and I grew up with Goonies, but I prefer him in Indiana Jones."

"I would probably say À ma soeur!, the Catherine Breillat film. If you could put that title instead of Fat Girl. I’m just kidding. I don’t really like saying my movie is related to that. I do think Catherine Breillat is brilliant and her movies have so much psychological weight to them. Those two sisters, they’re just, like, titanic, in terms of the conflict between them. The sexual scene with the boy is one of the most charged, terrifying, strange, impossible-to-describe scenes ever, that long take. The sort of depth of… Anaïs? The main girl? Just the depth of her look, how significant her neutral look and gaze is. Her stare is one of the best stares ever. And I stole the swimsuit from that movie and put it in my movie. I just completely stole the lime green one-piece and put it in my movie. I just love Catherine Breillat. I just think she’s incredibly smart. It’s very exciting, and it’s a sign of a really incredible director to show how much tension and tone can be wrought out of a scene of a younger sister staring out of her covers at her older sister from the bed across the room. It’s kind of incredible how powerful and charged that movie feels before it becomes insane at the end. To me, the brutality and shock of the ending, I was feeling throughout the entire movie. It’s just crazy when it shows up literally."

"Deer Hunter — the human experience was just so pointed; their journeys were so difficult, as life is sometimes. I remember after seeing it, walking down the street — I actually went with a girl on a date and saw The Deer Hunter, and we left the theater and walked for like an hour and nobody said anything; we were just kind of stunned about that."