"Sure, it’s uneven. For every Book of Job there’s a Book of Leviticus, featuring some of the most boring prose ever written. But if you were stranded on a desert island, what book would better reward long study? And has there ever been a more beautiful distillation of existential philosophy than the Book of Ecclesiastes? Excluding those bizarre final verses, which seem to have been tacked on long after the book’s original composition, by priests nervous about the subversive message."

"The Producers is one of my favorite movies, and I don’t mean the musical. I mean the original one that Mel Brooks directed, with Zero Mostel. I saw it when it first came out. I saw it in the movie theaters, back in the ’60s. I just think as a comedy, and also being in the business as I am, and coming from theater, it just had that much more impact for me. That’s a movie I like very much."

"We will switch gears completely, and I will say the original Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn, which really influenced my style. Just driving up with her trunks of luggage on the back of the car… it was just such a beautiful film. The clothing, I just was like, whoa. The elegance of it, the time period, the black-and-whiteness of it, the cast. It’s just one of those classic films that kind of etched a place in my aesthetics of style and elegance."

"Steven Soderbergh totally rocks. He is the bravest, smartest, most original filmmaker in the U.S. today. I don’t like all his films, but I not only like but admire most of them; and even in his minor work there is still more genuine love and understanding of cinema than in the most accomplished works of some others. Che, the one movie ever made that seriously deals with military strategy, helped me imagine Carlos on a scale that otherwise would have intimidated me."

"Moore is completely unsentimental but able to stir enormous feelings in the reader, or, certainly, in me. Her style is so original: The way this book is structured, the narrative is like an anagram. It begins with Benna, a singer, and her neighbor Gerard. The characters in each succeeding chapter have the same names, but they're different people. In one, she's a schoolteacher and he's a graduate student. I've never read a book where the identity is the same but always changing."