"Roxane Gay describes her book Hunger as a ‘memoir about my body’. It traverses many of the issues surrounding our human bodies, the sexual experiences we have, our relationship with food, how we feel about our own bodies and the difference gender has to play on a body…While parts of the book are difficult to read, it highlights the very real damage done by sexual violence and puts you in the mind and body of someone that has to move through the world in a different way. A small insight or perspective I feel grateful for now having and understanding a little bit better."

"Then along those same lines, probably in the same conversations where my dad said, “You’re gonna watch Braveheart,” he said, “You’re gonna watch Gladiator.” I think it’s just maybe the crazy world setting. It is so big and far-fetched and out there, but the characters are just so real and intimate, and Russell [Crowe] is just so great in that movie. I think it’s the combination of those two things that was the first thing that stabs me. I remember just the image of the hand in the wheat and how beautiful it is. The whole movie’s really beautiful. Those shots are killer."

"The films that really changed my life were all the films made by Charlie Chaplin. Films like The Gold Rush. They were silent films, they were black and white. As a kid, I would just completely get mesmerized with every aspect of cinema. That kind of magic I’d never yet seen, the magic Charlie Chaplin created on screen — in terms of performances, in terms of technique, in terms of innocence, in terms of purity. I would wonder, “Is there anyone in the world who can match this?” I would see other films, and I’d think, “No, this guy is a real genius.” He makes me smile. And sometimes he moves me."

"Huge, magical, realist epic about Indian Independence through the eyes of a child born on the stroke of midnight. Funny, dense, flowery, the story goes on huge tangents, but I love this crazy novel, which somehow manages to depict and sum up the essence of the incredible vast country of India. A real education for me as someone who grew up in London, who had never been to India while growing up. This book helped me better understand what my parents had been through, where they came from before they chose to travel across the world to settle in the the U.K., where I was born."

"Easily, without hesitation, the most difficult, and disturbing movie I’ve ever seen. I knew after I watched it a second time (mostly to verify the feelings it instilled in me the night before when I initially watched it) that that would be the last time I ever saw it. In a culture crammed with “shocksploitation” movies that are really pornographic in their violence and depravity but empty of any symbolism or real meaning (Human Centipede anyone?), Salo is as bleak and depressing a movie for it’s “Banality of Evil” truth that permeates every moment. There’s no escape. This is the world we’ve created for ourselves."