"The great Buñuelian diptych on the oddity of the Western social meal ritual, which of course is merely a filter with a distinct mesh dense enough to catch human absurdities big and small, perverse and banal, greedy and self-delusional. Surrealist is such a silly, debased, and inadequate term for full-flower Buñuel; in fact, the best Mexican and French films are birds of paradise belonging to their own exclusive breed. You can put them only in cages with Buñuel’s name on them."

"The great Buñuelian diptych on the oddity of the Western social meal ritual, which of course is merely a filter with a distinct mesh dense enough to catch human absurdities big and small, perverse and banal, greedy and self-delusional. Surrealist is such a silly, debased, and inadequate term for full-flower Buñuel; in fact, the best Mexican and French films are birds of paradise belonging to their own exclusive breed. You can put them only in cages with Buñuel’s name on them."

"As a children’s movie, this might be a failure, but as a surrealist nightmare set in a world of Yuletide kitsch, it’s a masterpiece. Santa lives in a castle in outer space, with a wizard and a giant room full of singing children of every ethnic stereotype imaginable. The reindeer are robots. He watches the earth with a giant all-seeing electronic eyeball. Satan sends a demon to corrupt the children of earth, and only you-know-who can stop him. And that’s only the beginning…"

"In my teens I got to know García Lorca’s poems in Icelandic translations. I was instantly fascinated by their dramatic tales of tragic loves, their intense night visions and images of human and botanic flowers. Infused with a surrealist use of metaphor, folkloric energy derived from flamenco and the Arabic heritage of al-Andaluz, Lorca’s poems reach deep into the ancient origin of soul while flashing with modern wit and bravery. Wonders happen when the poet travels over the Atlantic and tests his poetic tools in the New World."

"“I’m not typically interested in poetry, but I discovered The Flowers of Evil in high school as I was just becoming a goth and getting into Trent Reznor – and everyone else was getting into the Beat poets, who I find comparably boring if we’re going to discuss druggy, surrealist poetry. This work is so visceral, filthy and gorgeously written. It feels like a distillation of the opium scenes from Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, but more abstract and extensively documented. This one poem is just a disgusting, sexual description of a corpse that is permanently burned into my mind.”"

"This is a record I had when I was a younger man and I stumbled back onto it. I love every song on it. I love his melodies. I love his surrealist point of view. He was really in love with language and melody. [sings] “My wife and my dead wife, did anyone ever see her?” He knows he’s getting your attention. He’s very entertaining. [sings] “I’m the man with the lightbulb head!” He’s got me man! He had me with the song titles alone. It has this one 80s poppy number. ['Heaven'] (sings) “She’s got heaven, heaven in her eyes.” He doesn’t sound groundbreaking lyrically up to that point. He gets to the resolve: “She’s got arms, she’s got legs, she’s got heaven.” It’s like the object of affection in the song is being dismembered. He’s not expressing his own sexual drive. He’s not saying it how Rod Stewart would say it. [At this point he unleashes a Rod Stewart howl.] Hitchcock’s poetry bubbles out of him like Lewis Carrol. It doesn’t have to make sense."

"I was 16 or 17. I'd just started doing Art A Level at school, and this whole world suddenly just opened up. For ages, I'd been playing the flute, playing the saxophone and skateboarding. That was it really and then all of a sudden, I hit that age. My friend Adrian had a ridiculous record collection. He started making tapes for us, me and another friend of mine, and he introduced us to all that stuff: The Doors, The Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix. I was getting really into art and really into poetry. I discovered Picasso, Matisse, Magritte at the same time. I also discovered surrealism and surrealist poetry, literally in the same couple of years. It was like an explosion in my head. 
'Run Run Run' was just brilliant because it was so chaotic. I'd been into music for a while - I was really into The Police and various bits - but this was just so different. I just loved how nihilistic it was. Really dirty. Luckily my partner's a massive Velvet Underground fan as well, so we stick it on quite often, even now. I still get the same feeling from it when I listen to it now that I did that very first time. I still get that electric charge of energy from it."