"Legends of the Fall I’ve watched a million times. That’s such a beautiful story, and such a real one and a sad one, about the unexpected things life brings, like certain relationships. And sometimes, a lot of the time, life doesn’t end in happy endings. The first time I saw it, I was so young that it was just a beautiful film to me. Obviously, the role of Tristan, the role he plays, is so appealing, and that want and need to tame the wild beast, if you will."

"The first and only fan letter I wrote to an author (other than to Gloria Steinem) was to Wally Lamb. It started with, “How can a man have written this book?” I bathed in Wally Lamb’s creation of a flawed but fascinating heroine teen girl who morphs into a sometimes misled, powerful and flawed adult woman. Her life’s adventures and choices, both positive and positively horrid, still touch me on my third, fourth and fifth read of this novel. (I loved it so much I voiced the book on tape.)"

"I love this book because it is a haunting, touching, and beautifully written story about a deeply flawed family. I also love it because it was put into my hands more than 20 years ago by a young woman who said to me: ‘You must read this book.’ Did I ask that young woman to marry me because of McFarland’s book? That might be overstating things. But sometimes when someone changes your life by handing you a great book, she might be there to change your life in other ways as well."

"Psycho is a wonderful, elevated horror film, and it doesn’t necessarily have monsters or ghosts,” Simmons says. “You ever see Psycho? I’m embarrassed to say that there are people out there who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Shame on them. It’s interesting to note Psycho had murders and all this kind of wacky stuff but you never saw a knife go into a body. You never saw a body actually bleed. I think that made it even more horrific. Sometimes the scariest things are what human beings are capable of.”

"I remember being very angry at their album title being Nevermind. I thought Nevermind? Have you lost your bollocks or something? I was drawing a line on it all, perhaps too sharply, but I have to say “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is one of pop music’s all-time greatest. That song is firmly embedded in my psyche. So, I forgive them. Most bands can’t come up with one complete song, and sometimes one is enough. By “Heart-Shaped Box,” it was all starting to sound a bit suicidal. I felt it coming."

"That’s a film that, for me, that’s one that, even more than Annie Hall, is like an I-know-every-word kind of movie, you know, that I just can’t get over. It’s very comforting to me. It’s one of those comfort films. And it’s also really funny. And it’s one of those movies like… All the things about these romantic comedies and relationship movies or whatever, they don’t even make them like that any more, you know? Except for independent film. Independent film sometimes does, but you don’t really see them."

"Sometimes I think the greatest movie. Inexorable in its working out. Vittorio de Sica unbeatable as a WWII small time crook who goes along to get along and then finds himself having to be brave, not something he's ever wanted to be. The most horrific scene where a partisan is taken into a room to be tortured. Door shuts. Conversation goes on in a room outside, Nazi officer, collaborators, idle and casual, a few drinks, nothing heard from inside. Then the door opens. Has to be seen, this movie."

"Although any one of the recent godsend rush of Kurosawa releases could go in this slot. For years now this gem (and much of his filmography) has only been available for us poor Region 1 sods on crappy import discs, and though the broken English subtitles via a bad Chinese translation had a sometimes poetic dadaistic flair, it’s a relief to finally have a beautiful, intelligible disc of it. The film itself stands easily up to Stray Dog and High and Low as one of Kurosawa’s best contemporary crime dramas."