"I saw this film in high school and I watch and re-watch it now like it’s an old friend. It’s about this very specific debutante culture in Manhattan, but because the protagonist is the outsider, we feel like it’s our movie, too. We’re the outsider who has a crush on the incredible, Molly Ringwald-esque Carolyn Farina."

"I don't know who turned me on to this autobiography, but his sense of humor and the hardships he went through stayed with me—especially the scene where he started running home from school. It led to his joining thetrack team, which led to a scholarship to college. Running opened up a whole world for him."

"The amazing, inspiring true story of a young woman raised by a fundamentalist Mormon family in Idaho – she had no birth certificate, never attended school, never saw a doctor – who eventually, through sheer force of will, manages to leave, go to college, and ultimately receive a PhD from Cambridge. A lesson in what people can overcome."

"Silas Marner was probably on the 1945 high school curriculum because it was short and not about sex. I hated it — didn’t have a clue what it wasabout. Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans) writes with a dry, adult humor and depth of experience of pain I could only appreciate when I finally finished growing up."

"I wasn’t sure if they were an army, a gang, or a specialized task force of geological engineers. Whatever they were, when this came out, I wanted to enlist. There was something so satisfying about their regimented chaos. I’d love to see some of these new-school rock bands step up to this level of concept."

"Jubilee is a really excellent time capsule of a scene, and when I first saw it on VHS in high school, it made a big impression on me. I especially love the scene called “Jordan’s Dance,” which was probably one of the first times I saw such an effective and purposeful combination of beauty and destruction."

"I first read this in school as a teenager where everyone in class had to read out three paragraphs and then it moved on to the next student. The experience always stuck with me, as did the Brontë sisters — strong women of that time who had to hide behind a pseudonym. I always love their words."