"I was a student at N.Y.U. in the ’90s. It was the first semester of a musical theater class, and one of the students got up and sang “Every Day a Little Death.” It was dark outside and snowing, and I remember hearing the song and thinking, “What is this?” It’s such a simple series of tiny moments that make up a day, that seem to be completely pragmatic descriptions of everyday life, played against the unbelievable torrent of sweeping emotion underneath in the music. And that is such a classic skill of Steve’s, where lyric plays against music, and the two things together, in the ear of the listener, tell you the whole story."

"Well I always have a hard time with this. As we get older or grow or whatever, it’s always changing, because you just see more movies, for one thing, so you change. One of my most favorite movies, I think a perennial favorite movie of mine is La Ronde. I don’t know how well acquainted you are with it. It’s one of my favorite movies. Anton Walbrook is one of the stars, who also the stars of another one of my favorite movies, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. He’s the guy who’s that German who has the seven-minute monologue with the moving camera that never cuts, and he breaks down during it."