"I remember reading about a composer named Steve Reich who came up with a new idea called phasing, which is like windshield wipers going in and out of synch. Apparently he was caught in a traffic jam one rainy day and the rhythm of the windshield wipers caught his attention and he applied what he heard to his musical compositions. He has had a significant influence on contemporary music, and I think he's a great example as an innovator. Sometimes new ideas can come from something as mundane and functional as your windshield wipers. The key is to pay attention and keep your brain and senses open to new stimuli.""

"The films that really changed my life were all the films made by Charlie Chaplin. Films like The Gold Rush. They were silent films, they were black and white. As a kid, I would just completely get mesmerized with every aspect of cinema. That kind of magic I’d never yet seen, the magic Charlie Chaplin created on screen — in terms of performances, in terms of technique, in terms of innocence, in terms of purity. I would wonder, “Is there anyone in the world who can match this?” I would see other films, and I’d think, “No, this guy is a real genius.” He makes me smile. And sometimes he moves me."

"Nic Roeg’s disturbing portrait of a creep (played almost too well by Art Garfunkel) investigates the desire that some men have for their women to just shut up and be their playthings. Mike Leigh’s Naked is one of the darkest, saddest, most hopeless depictions of corrupted masculinity in movies. David Thewlis manages to allow for slivers of humanity in his enraged wreck of a character, but Leigh seems to suggest that the world can only make room for these men at our own peril. The ultimate in Rainy Day Bummers, which are the movies I sometimes need to watch to find my center again."

"Nic Roeg’s disturbing portrait of a creep (played almost too well by Art Garfunkel) investigates the desire that some men have for their women to just shut up and be their playthings. Mike Leigh’s Naked is one of the darkest, saddest, most hopeless depictions of corrupted masculinity in movies. David Thewlis manages to allow for slivers of humanity in his enraged wreck of a character, but Leigh seems to suggest that the world can only make room for these men at our own peril. The ultimate in Rainy Day Bummers, which are the movies I sometimes need to watch to find my center again."

"This novel is cited by many of my author friends as the best in the English language. I, too, am awed by its beauty and intelligence, so much so that I sometimes feel I should stop writing. (I won’t.) The narrator of this story has been bestowed with telepathic powers by virtue of the time of his birth. This proves useful in recounting his life, which is coincidentally wrapped around historical events in India. Rushdie injects much political criticism of the powers that came to be, and this trait in his writing recalls for me George Orwell’s treatise on why we write: politics has much to do with it."

"I don’t hesitate to state that no one becomes a great writer without drinking from the spring of fables. Sometimes their influence shows on the surface and at other times it remains hidden inside the story like bones in a body. In this magnificent collection of dark stories, Vollmann — who many consider having written the Great American Novel more than once — proves himself a master storyteller whose pitcher of that fabled water never runs dry. Drawing on sources from the North, The South, The East and the West he takes us on a journey through many last nights on earth and in the worlds beyond."

"I sometimes hear films described as “Lynchian,” which, I take it, means that they deal with a certain space between light and darkness (or perhaps it’s just a more sophisticated way of saying that something is flat-out creepy). The Scarlet Empress is David Lynch for 1934 . . . and by that I mean that the lighting design is crucial. I love the scene where the freaky Grand Duke Peter (whom I recognized as the crotchety book salesman from my childhood favorite—the ever-so-slightly psychedelically tinged—Bedknobs and Broomsticks) emerges from the shadows to meet his new bride, the Princess Sophia Frederica (played by Marlene Dietrich) for the first time"