"I just re-read Ask the Dust by John Fante. It’s semiautobiographical about a guy who’s trying to be a writer in Los Angeles, and it takes place during the Great Depression. It was one of my favorite books in college. It was crazy to re-read it in my 30s, as well as to live vicariously through some of the places that I haven’t seen in almost two months. I’m also trying to keep things light so I’ve been reading Fifty Great Short Stories by Milton Crane."

"Is this pretentious? I don’t care, whatever. I read Moby Dick in college and it dissolved my brain and re-grew me a new one, and I read it again this year and let me tell you it lives up to the hype! Is anything as gorgeous as Melville's prose? “For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life”? Are you kidding me, Herman??????"

"In college, I took a poetry class with Jorie Graham, an amazing poet. She directed me to Hass, and his stuff moved me so much. His writing is very American, spare, clean. And manly. There’s a ruggedness to his poems. One in particular I’ve always loved is called ‘Dragonflies Mating.’ It combines a sense of abandonment in childhood with natural images. I don’t even know exactly what it means, but I think that’s what poetry does—it evokes all these feelings without our really understanding why or how it’s done."

"[Akira] Kurosawa’s Rashomon. I mean, any Kurosawa blows my mind out my ass. We did a production of Rashomon that was actually a play. We did that at my college. We had this amazing sword teacher named Robin McFarquhar, and that was one of his big triumphs, was this production of Rashomon. It’s such a cool play, because you do it four times in a row, and you get everybody’s perspective. You know, one time the samurai is brave, one time he’s a coward. It’s really delicious for the actors."

"Homecoming tells the story behind Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella show, which makes a huge statement about the importance of African American education and the college experience. It cuts through the idea of pop stars just arriving into culture, being presented to the world as if they’re just naturally talented and what they do is absolutely no effort. Beyoncé works so hard! She’s on top of every detail – the choreography, the costumes, the lighting, the staging – and it’s so great seeing a woman so much in charge of her ideas. It makes you want to work harder."