"The first time I read it I was 13 – now I read it about every five years. It’s such a complete world. I love the combination of how real and surreal it is at the same time – and how it spans history and time. It’s poetic. And very sympathetic.”"

"I consume this film the way I imagine foodies consume fine cuisine. I am utterly in awe of how it presents layers of complication while remaining entertaining and super satisfying. It’s a visually stunning and surreal take on an existential conundrum and a sharp reminder that you can’t always get what you want."

"Perhaps the best introduction to another great original of the English novel, who learned from Firbank's economy, but who had his own quite different imaginative world. Loving, set among the servants of an Irish country house, combines his superbly truthful ear for how people really speak with an unforgettable vein of surreal poetry."

"I guess lastly is Baby Doll by Elia Kazan, where Karl Malden plays a sexually inexperienced husband, and his wife plays him for a fool, pretending to be a 12-year-old nymphette. Again it’s a very Southern Gothic, surreal, sexual perversion escapade. It’s another film I’ve watched many times and find it very hilarious."

"This novel, a linked series of strange and acid and darkly comic vignettes on life in Naples at the end of World War II, gets at the material reality of a liberator (the American military) as occupier and at the contradictory and surreal world of Naples. In sum, no one is innocent, not even Malaparte."