"Simpson describes a complex mother-daughter relationship with brilliant complexity and unflinching honesty. She also does a remarkable job capturing a sense of place, whether the setting is Wisconsin or Los Angeles."

"For me, this film is about the pleasure of entering into an outsider’s observations of one’s own territory. A German filmmaker comes to rural Wisconsin in the mid-1970s, and sees things that I might take for granted, and shows how ridiculous or moving they are. The emotional range is tremendous. Herzog is not afraid of symbolism. The ending, featuring a dancing chicken in a highway rest stop sideshow, is absurdly devastating."

"Niedecker lived most of her life in Blackhawk Island, a remote and marshy setting in Wisconsin, where she scrubbed hospital floors and cared for her deaf mother while writing some of the most quixotic, minimalist, moving poems of the 20th century. I know many by heart, like this one: “My friend tree / I sawed you down / but I must attend / an older friend / the sun,” but I still wouldn’t want to be without the hard copy."

"When I first met Peter Quill in Kyln, I ain’t never heard of a “raccoon,” but he made me watch this movie and… aww flarg, I loved it! It’s a gritty tale about a wily raccoon that gets abducted by one of Quill’s ancient ancestors in some cheese hut called “Wisconsin.” The little guy unleashes a whole lot of krutack on his captors and eventually cons the kid into letting him go free. It reminded me of my own childhood, when I got stuck in a lab on Halfworld. That’s where I met my best bud Groot. This flick had us bawling like saplings. BUT DON’T TELL QUILL! I don’t want him to know we was gettin’ sentimental…"

"In 1993, a good friend of mine who had recently moved to Livingston, Montana introduced me to Jim Harrison. He had flown to Wisconsin to join me for a weekend of waterfowl hunting and brought with him Harrison’s The Woman Lit by Fireflies, which he was convinced I’d like. I read the book the following week and felt it had cast a spell on me. I called my friend and thanked him profusely for introducing me to Harrison. Then I read everything else Harrison had written, including his poetry (Harrison considered himself, first and foremost a poet), which I found as evocative as his novellas and novels. I especially admired Harrison’s attention to the details of a landscape. Harrison, in turn, led me to a group of Western writers—Thomas McGuane, William Kittredge, Ivan Doig, and Cormac McCarthy, to name only a few—who would have a profound effect on my writing."