"Van Sant is my hero. This movie is a concentration of all the things I love from him: brilliant camera games, muted and unsatisfied love(s), beautiful car scenes. The voice-over is stirring and true, and never useless or superfluous. It is authentic, intimate, universal, and ageless."

"Most commentators stress the heartbreak, delicacy and sympathy, and so on, but Ozu, like Blake, was of the devil’s party without knowing it. Although it is called Tokyo Story, its truth is universal: the only thing worse than having your parents to stay is having your in-laws to stay."

"Everything about this novel is poetic. From the ripe symbolism and haunting telling of true love, to witnessing the true liberation of a woman who has led a life dictated by societal pressures. The story of Janie is both insanely specific to her life and also a statement on the universal transformative stages of womanhood."

"My favourite Wailer. Bob [Marley] was the poet, Bunny [Wailer] was the mystic, but Tosh was the radical. It’s militant music with no compromise, born out of struggle but filled with empathy for the oppressed. Tosh was a wounded boy who knew injustice and his music transforms that personal experience into something universal. And it says, fight back!"

"Reading Rilke, on the other hand, was like breathing in pure poetic oxygen. He spoke of life in a different way than I’d ever understood it before. His expressions of cosmic suffering and universal knowledge related to ideas I would find later in Zen Buddhist and Sufi writings. Coming upon them for the first time was intoxicating."