"On Christmas of 1994, I was fifteen and had just come out to my family. I was also an aspiring writer who adored Virginia Woolf. I put Chloe Plus Olivia on my Christmas list, not expecting anyone to actually seek out an anthology of lesbian literature and buy it for me. But my dad did: he made a special trip to the University Bookstore in Seattle; he wrapped it and put it under the tree for me. I devoured the book, took it to college with me years later, then moved into my first apartment with it when I was twenty. It’s long gone now (lost in another move), but I still remember it fondly as a formative literary text, and as a sign that my dad loved and supported me without hesitation."

"In preparation for my Christmas film, White Reindeer, I watched this movie and wrote down a description of every single shot, including each camera move and change in blocking. Not only is Heaven Sirk’s most fully realized, subversive takedown of suburban hypocrisy, it’s also the best Christmas movie of all time, and such a marvel of style and camera direction that you barely notice how intricate its construction is until you force yourself to examine it. Sirk said that, in cinema, “motion is emotion,” and that ethos reaches its zenith in the zoom in on Jane Wyman’s reflection in a television screen. This is nothing less than the greatest dolly movie in cinema history. If anyone ever tells you irony and sincerity can’t coexist, tell them they are painfully, tragically wrong."