"There might have been personal things in my life right here, because I wanted to strip things down. Another inspiration was a lot of country singer-songwriters. I’m friends with a guy named Terry Allen, who’s a great, very eccentric songwriter. Both of us have worked with Lucinda Williams, who everybody knows is an incredible songwriter. There’s an early group called the Flatlanders, and their first records or demos were just amazing. I was really immersed in these people who were writing very simply, as far as their musical arrangements, and very heartfelt. I was getting a lot of inspiration from them."

"Look at it this way: The Twilight Zone is your memories of growing up, of learning to understand a certain language of cinematic storytelling that embraces fantastic twists of plot and character. Then, when you’re older, and it occurs to you to ask your parents what things were really like back in the day, the answer is Patterns, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and The Comedian, all written by Rod Serling. Of course, there’s more than Serling’s writing to love here: the immediacy of the productions and the adrenaline of the performances make for a perfect record of this incredibly pivotal era of storytelling."

"I discovered Christopher Isherwood in college. His writing style is so direct, warm, and inclusive. There's one passage in this book, published in 1964, that has really stayed with me — the description of America. The narrator is a British man teaching at a California college. He and a few colleagues are having a conversation, and an American woman is saying how romantic Mexico is. She's critical of America. The protagonist argues with her, talking about the virtues of the United States. He says that its beauty is in its abstraction. I thought that was an amazing insight — possibly true and compelling at least."

"A true diva and genius, of course. This is one the best autobiographies I've ever read, recounting Simone’s upbringing in North Carolina in a non-segregated community; her schooling as a child prodigy by a Russian grand dame piano teacher; playing rough bars in evening dress and telling the winos to shut up or she wouldn't play (and they did!); to the absolute shock when she didn't get into Juilliard because of her color. By the time she's describing writing “Mississippi Goddam,” all my hairs were standing on end! A powerful woman, powerful activist, and amazing musician."

"A coming-of-age story of two young Catholic girls in Ireland. This is a writer who is a woman, a lover, a daughter, a mother and she tries to bring all that together in her work. So few women writers were doing that in the 1960s. Instead, they were writing through a male persona, because they knew that otherwise they wouldn't be taken seriously. But as O'Brien says, 'I am the mother of sons; my sons have given me joy. I am a lover of men, and men have broken my heart -- but they've also given me joy."

"I can tell you a recent book I read that I was incredibly moved by: I read Olive Kitteridge when I was making United States of Tara, and it was my introduction to Elizabeth Strout's writing, who I think is so incredibly talented," the Unbelievable actress told OprahMag.com. "She knows and understands humanity on a level that very few people can express. So I was given an advanced copy of the sequel, Olive, Again—and man, I couldn't put it down! It moved me to tears. I laughed out loud, and I just love everything that Elizabeth Strout writes"

"Godfather one and two, as one movie — but not blended together; I don’t think that worked when they tried to combine them [for the TV version]. I have to just say that The Godfather is a quintessential American film, where it’s absolutely satisfying. The writing is so excellent — what is being said, and the nuance of what is being said, is so understood. And the color, again, situates you in a particular moment in time. It’s a portrait of America. It’s one of those things where storytelling and acting found one of those magical, elegant solutions…"