"I had been a rather reluctant punk as a teenager, finding the whole movement too aggressive for a Peterborough gay boy, so this I suppose more commercial offering from Siouxsie was much more up my street - and consequently, as with all my favourite teen angst albums, I learnt all of the songs inside out and backwards. Siouxsie has an incredible voice and was one of my first live concerts, alongside Joe Jackson. We were later to bump into her at Sire Records in NYC but I was too nervous and shy too say 'Hi'."

"The first and only fan letter I wrote to an author (other than to Gloria Steinem) was to Wally Lamb. It started with, “How can a man have written this book?” I bathed in Wally Lamb’s creation of a flawed but fascinating heroine teen girl who morphs into a sometimes misled, powerful and flawed adult woman. Her life’s adventures and choices, both positive and positively horrid, still touch me on my third, fourth and fifth read of this novel. (I loved it so much I voiced the book on tape.)"

"I remember being very angry at their album title being Nevermind. I thought Nevermind? Have you lost your bollocks or something? I was drawing a line on it all, perhaps too sharply, but I have to say “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is one of pop music’s all-time greatest. That song is firmly embedded in my psyche. So, I forgive them. Most bands can’t come up with one complete song, and sometimes one is enough. By “Heart-Shaped Box,” it was all starting to sound a bit suicidal. I felt it coming."

"When I was a teen, like for many of my generation, Monty Python were my comic heroes. But as brilliantly directed as the Python films are (look close at Monty Python and the Holy Grail—there are a lot of incredibly shot sequences), nothing prepared my for the amazing mix of humor, heart, and insane inventiveness that Terry Gilliam brought to his solo work. These two titles are films I bring up constantly in meetings in Hollywood—which usually leads to me being asked to leave. But I don’t care."

"When I was a teen, like for many of my generation, Monty Python were my comic heroes. But as brilliantly directed as the Python films are (look close at Monty Python and the Holy Grail—there are a lot of incredibly shot sequences), nothing prepared my for the amazing mix of humor, heart, and insane inventiveness that Terry Gilliam brought to his solo work. These two titles are films I bring up constantly in meetings in Hollywood—which usually leads to me being asked to leave. But I don’t care."