"This memoir recounts the time Karen Blixen (a Danish author) spent in Kenya from 1914. When I saw the 1985 movie version with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, it just killed me and inspired me to read the book. Both make me sob so much I can hardly breathe. Later, my assistant gave me a beautiful old copy, which makes me treasure the story more. I even stayed in the Karen Blixen suite at the Hotel D’Angleterre in her native Copenhagen. The relationship between Blixten and the Safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton broke my heart. It’s a book about finding and losing love"

"Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream), a song on my new album, was written about New Moon. The song is about what happens when a relationship breaks down or, more specifically, when you are abandoned in some way. I could totally relate to that. I think that Meyer’s stories are magnificent and I’m amazed at how she built her complex world. Writing a song seems much simpler that writing a novel – a song is just five verses and a chorus! I think the love story between Edward and Bella is going to live on forever, like Beauty and the Beast."

"Another classic foundation piece of modern cinema. My personal favorite thing about this film is the relatable dynamic of the two main characters’ somewhat undefined relationship, a dynamic that after fifty years still feels as modern as ever. For different reasons, I’m also a big fan of the widely panned 1983 remake starring Richard Gere, in arguably the coolest role of his career. The remake is no Godard—really it’s a different film—but I challenge anyone to forget that they’ve ever seen the original for ninety minutes, revisit the remake, and not admit its criminally overlooked qualities!"

"To my knowledge, Loving Her is the first novel about an interracial lesbian relationship written by a black woman. Viewed as an artistic work, I think the novel fails. But in its exploration of a daring subject boldly shared (and written by a librarian at Fisk University) I think it has immense value. It enables us to see and understand, perhaps for the first time, the choices certain women have made about how they will live their lives, and allows us glimpses at physical intimacies between women that have been, in the past, deliberately ridiculed or obscured."

"It’s about how feminism fails to address the relationship between mothers and daughters because of its emphasis on escaping the house. I didn’t finish it—who has the time or the energy to read when you’re a new mom?—but I remember how the book talked about the pressure to please and be perfect that every woman falls into and then projects onto her daughter. Nothing is ever good enough. No woman can ever outrun what she has to do. No one can be all things—a mother, a good partner, a lover, as well as a competitor in the workplace."

"It’s a French movie, pretty recently that I just – and I’m not alone, it was, like, the biggest movie of the year around the world – but I just love it so much. It’s so great. It’s about a friendship between two guys: one who is a super rich guy who is a paraplegic and his caretaker, and the friendship that comes of that working relationship. It’s funny, it’s real, it’s sweet, it’s moving. I cried, l laughed — it’s just a brilliant film. And I’m not surprised it did as well as it did. It’s so good, it’s so good."

"The other Louis Malle I chose, my favorite of his and the first one I saw. I was lucky enough to take a class on Malle in university, and so I was exposed to this great filmmaker at a young age. This is by far the best coming-of-age story I have ever seen. The incestuous mother/son relationship is surprisingly underplayed and comical. In a scenario that would otherwise be shocking, Malle doesn’t judge his characters, he just tells their story. Also notable is the beautiful Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker soundtrack. A wonderful, rare movie."

"Our developed world is bursting with screens and projections pumping out an incessant stream of what’s real, and what’s represented to be real. In this moment when we are witnessing the evolution of virtual reality, I find Baudrillard’s classic work of semiotics especially relevant. It has been hugely influential for me as a basis from which to explore important concepts and ethics around what our relationship with art and meaning will become. In the future, we will increasingly view the world through representations of reality, which will become so realistic that our brains could become completely deceived."