"I saw the movie as a teenager and I loved it, but I didn’t know why I loved it. I loved it because it just felt like a gargantuan document about time and the history of time, but I didn’t really understand it. Then I saw it again probably in my mid-20s, and the part that I glommed on most to was – and this was pre-AI, basically pre-Siri; you could imagine me thinking about 2001 in the age of Siri. But then I watched it again probably two years ago, and it absolutely transformed itself, and I started to take different meaning from it. And I realized that, ultimately, what it was saying is that we are the aliens, and that curiosity, mankind’s curiosity, is what actually leads to our own demise in a deep, deep way. That we know something is a problem, yet we want to embrace it. I haven’t ever felt that way while watching a film. It’s such a perfect, beautiful document about the universe."

"I’ll pair this with Mouchette, because they are beautiful, and if I remember right they were released only a year apart, an anomaly for filmmaker Bresson whose films often had many years between their respective release dates. I tried to go to college; in fact, I did go but did not come very close to completing a degree. The highlight of my attempt at formal higher learning was a seminar led by Michael Silverman on the movies of Robert Bresson. At the first meeting of the seminar, Silverman told us that he was still intrigued, confused, and puzzled by Bresson’s movies, even years into the experiences of witnessing them. So, he said, we would take this opportunity again to explore together their density and power. Balthazar and Mouchette slayed me, maybe Balthazar most of all because I identified more with the ass that was Balthazar than the angel that was Mouchette. Both movies are pitiless and intensely compassionate. They say, “This is how bad it is. Let us love until the end.”"

"It's a perfect record. Succinct, sad, melodic, definitely its own thing. The simplicity of it was a big thing for me, that music that simple can also be really moving… I think a lot of the simplicity of it might be to do that he was having a hard time and couldn't get it together to do anything particularly complicated, but it is a wonderful record. Just doing enough and never overblowing anything works so well. Has my music taste changed? I've always listened to quite loud and quite quiet music so I don't think getting older has changed it that much, not that I can think of. I think Belong is the only quite new record on this list, which is a bit fogeyish, but I guess you have to take a long time to know if something really is the best ever. Some of these lists you look down and they say 'best album of all time - number three, The Strokes!' No, wait, something has happened here. There is a disturbance in the force."