"Wide Sargasso Sea is inspired by Bronte’s classic Jane Eyre. The novel explores the life of Mrs Rochester, ‘the wild woman in the attic’, in 1830s Jamaica before she was brought to England by Mr Rochester. Jean Rhys wrote this book as a precursor to Jane Eyre because of her love for the Bronte novel. I saw the film adaptation of the book in the early 1990s and it inspired me to write the song of the same name on my album"

"We will switch gears completely, and I will say the original Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn, which really influenced my style. Just driving up with her trunks of luggage on the back of the car… it was just such a beautiful film. The clothing, I just was like, whoa. The elegance of it, the time period, the black-and-whiteness of it, the cast. It’s just one of those classic films that kind of etched a place in my aesthetics of style and elegance."

"Hey, storytellers: if you’re adapting a classic, this is film school 101. Never before or since (though I love Black Swan for trying) has anyone achieved what Powell and Pressburger did here, in terms of character and theme. Add the beautiful work of Jack Cardiff and you achieve something of which I, personally, can only hope to replicate a glimmer as a visual storyteller in comics and animation: Technicolor atmosphere that conveys immediate emotion and also has a lasting impact."

"The brilliant teacher I had for a Shakespeare seminar at Yale (Joel Dorius) asked us one day if we had an idea of what heaven, for us, would consist of. What you’d hope it would be. His own answer: “Just to sit in a screening room, watching Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise projected repeatedly and endlessly throughout eternity.” Hard to argue with that when you see and resee this classic. Dorius’s version of heaven beats hell out of harps and angels."