"I read The Easter Parade or Revolutionary Road every year. Richard Yates is just a good word-for-word on-the-page writer. He couldn’t be more different than someone like Joy Williams or Raymond Carver. His sentences are very complex, the stories are complicated and he was such a miserable man. I always like people who would hate me. I don’t know what that’s about. But Richard Yates would definitely hate me"

"I read The Easter Parade or Revolutionary Road every year. Richard Yates is just a good word-for-word on-the-page writer. He couldn’t be more different than someone like Joy Williams or Raymond Carver. His sentences are very complex, the stories are complicated and he was such a miserable man. I always like people who would hate me. I don’t know what that’s about. But Richard Yates would definitely hate me"

"Because I wanted to be her! She remains the greatest political interviewer of all time. I did not agree with her fierce post-9/11 diatribes, but no one can touch her for the fearlessness and deep knowledge she brought to all her important interviews. I wish I had been there when she ripped off her headscarf during an exclusive interview with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini. This book should be required reading for all journalists today! (This title is currently unavailable.)"

"Bo Widerberg is – like, to a certain extent, Jan Troell – one of the great modern filmmakers who has been least recognized. In a way, he was a Swedish Pialat – another great filmmaker whose international recognition remains problematic – his cinema intensely sensitive, inscribing itself in an osmosis with nature observed with an eye like that of the impressionists. The dry lyricism in this work is also that of revolutionary hopes at a labor movement’s inception, a lyricism also found in another of his films, Joe Hill."

"I would have picked Crooklyn but you guys haven’t put it out (yet), which I really do believe is one of Spike Lee’s most undervalued films. But Do the Right Thing had a similar influence on me growing up. It’s Brooklyn, it’s beautiful, it’s got a cast that is absolutely flawless—too many great performances to mention—and it was revolutionary and in-your-face. The cinematography by Ernest Dickerson is stunning and iconic. I felt so alive the first time I saw this film in high school and have in every subsequent viewing."