"A Czech artist arrives in New York in the late 1930s and joins his cousin, a Brooklyn-born writer, and together they create comics. The world of comic books at that time was exploding, with the arrival of Superman in 1937. It would be criminal to try and explain these adventures, but Chabon is a truly great writer and fortunately he gets to do that in this book."

"It was just the oddest time of my life. We were in Texas in some godforsaken little city, little town. We never stopped using the accent no matter what we said. We were just wrapped up in it. Ellen Burstyn and I would hang out together. We’d talk about our horrible situations, relationships, our marriages. We were both going through divorce. We never stopped talking in the accent."

"It has all the elements you’d expect from a Sherlock Holmes story—you’re presented with a number of things that would help you solve the question, but you can’t or you don’t. When you get to the end and Sherlock explains everything, you say, ‘Aw, I should have noticed that!’ All the facts are there. It’s hard to piece things together without the background and the inquisitive mind Holmes has."

"Brando and Kazan. If there is some pearly gates studio, many of the films being shown at the Angelic Cinematheques will have these heavyweights working together. Urban poetry, raw and unrestrained masculinity, a heightened method of “real” acting. The kind of picture that really pulls you in, forces all the senses to work in tandem. Hypnotic and earthy, the real stuff of cinema, electrolysis of the rough and the holy."

"I’m cheating again by listing two movies together, but the contrast is too good not to mention. I’m a big admirer of the Powell and Pressburger films, and these two would have to be my favorites. Actually, I’d easily list Black Narcissus as my favorite. But The Red Shoes is so celebrated (by comparison) that I want fans of that film to experience the unique vertigo of Black Narcissus."