"Such precious realism"

"I like Haruki Murakami. I enjoy the realism he mixes with the surreal Japanese mysticism in his narratives."

"The Long Goodbye, California Split, and Nashville might represent the best three years of any director’s career. There is a mix of realism and grittiness that Altman does to perfection."

"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."

"They call this masterpiece ‘magical realism’, but I hate the label. Real it is, human and passionate and endlessly moving and compelling. It’s about family, relationships, fate, time. And ghosts. And solitude. Marvelous."

"William Wyler directed an American social realism masterpiece after his return from WWII. The camera breathes with these characters, and, through the filmmaker’s patience, we come to know these veterans’ alienation as our own."