"There are three movies the witnessings of which have been the most traumatic in my moviegoing times. Viridiana was one, seen in a London cinema, maybe up between Hampstead and Highgate Tubes, in 1990 or so. Another was Straw Dogs (also available as a Criterion release). The third was The Elephant Man, one of the few movies to which I remember my mother taking me. A commonality in all three (the commonality from which I recoiled) is the cruelty of the mob, which remains one of my biggest fears. I put these two movies in this list because I can’t help but value what they did to me, what they allowed me to comprehend about my relationship to the crowd."

"I’d gone to college because it seemed the group wasn’t going to do anything. But as I left college in ’91, it felt like we were allowed to have fun again. Bands like Stereolab and Suede had started, and we played some concerts with them and got to meet some of the bands that were around in London at that time. By ’93, it was all turning into something interesting—I don’t think they’d come up with that horrible word “Britpop” yet, but there was a new movement of bands. It was before it really broke and got spoiled by getting too commercialized. It still was really just a bunch of people in secondhand clothes getting wasted in Camden, which was fun."

"It’s almost like these three sisters are a part of my family... I grew up in Sweden (New York, too, and by the time I read this book, was making my own life in London in my late teens). The world around me was not exactly celebrating cultural diversity... this book, and books like “The Color Purple,” “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and “Beloved,” took me by the hand, held me, beckoned me into womanhood, aroused a love of my heritage, and love for myself. I ate this book in one serving. It was passed down my by mother... again, I’ve given it to my daughters and waited, impatiently, to talk to them about it as they’ve read."