"I always return to Raymond Carver, his dirty realism, his sparse writing and his ambiguity is a joy to read, to drift away with, finding the dark corners and weird places."

"Walter Mosley reminds me of Raymond Chandler, [except] writing from the black side of town…He has the ability to describe the negative effects of racism while writing an entertaining novel."

"East of Eden was the movie that really put the hook in me to become a film actor, because of James Dean’s performance when he has the nervous breakdown trying to get the money to Raymond Massey, playing his father, from selling beans, and he’s rejected. That nervous breakdown affected me more than anything else, and that’s what made me want to become a film actor."

"When I was at school, Raymond Pettibon was one of my favourite artists. I'm not into comic books and I don't really like comic book artwork for records and some people probably would describe Raymond Pettibon in that style. And yet despite that, he just has something else. He has ideas. That particular picture on the cover of Goo was an image I was familiar with before I even knew who Sonic Youth were, which is probably a bit unusual. I came across it in one of his books. As a sixteen-year-old there were so many of his images, especially when those images included text, that really sparked off my thoughts. I found them really evocative. Sonic Youth are obviously a brilliant band but I only came to learn that a lot later."

"I recently made a documentary about going to Moscow to try to help turn Everybody Loves Raymond into a Russian sitcom. And I had some problems. But this, this was nuts. It’s the ultimate nightmare and the wildest making-of movie. One of the all-time great metaphors for art, or life, dragging a steamship up and over a mountain was Fitzcarraldo’s burden. And so it was of the filmmaker, the great and possibly crazy Werner Herzog. Among the beautiful insights here are his rants against nature. That’s what keeps me inside watching movies."