"I love Stanley Kubrick so much that the mere mention of his name is enough to make me smile involuntarily. This is not my favorite Kubrick film, but it’s terrific. Peter Sellers. The war room. The Coke machine. The way each plot element triggers the next like falling dominoes. It’s a perfect machine. There are so many funny and absurd lines: “Now look, Col. Bat Guano, if that really is your name” and “Of course it’s a friendly call. Listen, if it wasn’t friendly, you probably wouldn’t have even got it.” As always, I love Kubrick’s bureaucratic, non-psychological language. His persistent return to flat, transactional dialogue provides the perfect banal foil to his wilder, more imaginative moments."

"Once, visiting friends in San Francisco, a bookcase came loose from the wall and fell on me. Three people came running in from another room when they heard the crash and saw me sprawled on the floor beneath a mountain of books. Did they say, “Are you all right?” No. In unison, they all said, “Howards End!” That memory, and a recent PBS re-doing (even better than the excellent Merchant Ivory film) of Forster’s novel, have renewed my passion for this book. Its searing depiction of class differences, the wit of its dialogue, and the description of that vine-covered house—no wonder they fought over it!—go together to make this one of my favorites."