"This might not be an album that people celebrate, but to me, the combination of Phil Spector and Leonard Cohen worked really well. His lyrics are so deeply poetic that you sometimes don’t know what he’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter because they’re beautiful. “It’s a very humanistic record. The stories are very eloquent and touching, and the melodies are very rich. I love the fact that all the songs are unbelievably slow, too. It’s an unusual-sounding record. His voice has changed a lot over the years, but on this record he’s really trying to sing. It sounds like he’s straining, but that’s OK because it sort of adds to the drama."

"I’m sometimes a little ashamed at how little attention I pay to lyrics, especially as I am a lyricist myself. Consequently, albums seem to mean entirely different things to me to their intention. Music transports me; it allows me to travel through time. When I listen to Penguin Eggs, I am back to when I was going through my divorce, huddled in a blanket, taking too many of the wrong pills and listening to this over and over. Which isn't to say this record makes me sad either. It reminds of the comfort that music can bring in the worst possible moments. This album of sea shanties was a lifeboat for me; it still is."

"Yes, Cassavetes again, and by now it’s a no-brainer as to who my favorite filmmaker is. This time he takes on the gangster/noir genre but does it in his own inimitable abstract-expressionist style, where time slows down or sometimes speeds up, so we never know exactly where we are in terms of a traditional story arc or act structures. We are in dreamland . . . an opium-induced reverie. This is a portrait of an artist in the guise of a strip club owner, and Ben Gazzara’s Cosmo Vitelli is a career-topping performance. The onstage burlesque routines are worth the price of admission, as is the one and only Mr. Sophistication, played by Meade Roberts."

"I don't really know what to say about this record. It's just one of those very emotive pieces of music that you need to be in a certain frame of mind to listen to and enjoy – those quiet, reflective moments. There are certain albums you can't put on in the car, and this would be one of them. It just wouldn't work. You can hardly hear the first three minutes of this, even if you turn your speakers up to 11, but it gradually builds up. It's refreshing, sometimes, to listen to music that has a completely different pace and is from a different world. If you're in the right frame of mind, it can be something deeply moving."

"Bad Behavior is largely about sex, but it’s not cheesy or cheap. In this book of short stories, Gaitskill writes about women in the sex industry, people in power play relationships, S&M, and the general psychology of people who engage in so-called “bad behaviors” in a way that’s honest, sometimes brutal, and always beautiful. (For example, the darkly erotic film Secretary was adapted from a story in the book.) I first read this book around the time that I started Slutever, my blog about sexuality that still exists today, and it gave me confidence that writing about sex was a legitimate pursuit, and could be seen as intelligent, meaningful, and maybe even poetic."

"It was a great year for films. [laughs] Seeing that movie is one of the reasons I wanted to move to London, because it’s quite swinging — it’s like this weird mixture of a Hammer horror film and swinging London. There’s a scene where they cut from, I don’t know, 1569 or whatever, and it cuts to rock music and a jet airplane, so there’s a weird juxtaposition of things. I’ve gotten to know Christopher Lee over the years and I know that he would not say that this was one of his favorite films. I think it was Hammer on the decline and they thought, ‘Hey, let’s get hip,’ which was a mistake. But I enjoy mistakes sometimes."