"Number one that always springs to mind is Billy Wilder’s The Apartment. I’m sure you’re familiar with that film. It’s one of those movies which manages to combine all sorts of flavors. People tend to think of it as a romantic comedy, but actually it has some quite dark elements; the Shirley MacLaine character tries to kill herself at one point. And that’s the sort of movie, I like to think — in terms of the sort of films I would like to try and make — are films which are hard to pigeonhole. It has elements of humor, maybe, but there’s also drama in there. Billy Wilder’s one of my heroes, because I think he’s able to sort of step between different genres and make masterpieces."

"O’Connor enshrines in each of her characters an unforgettable rendition of a basic human flaw: venality, bigotry, pent-up anger, stupidity, jealousy, greed, even innocence. Her dark humor is funniest when she is laying bare some horrible piece of human nastiness. And the writing! She can evoke more from the particulars of a person’s face than any other writer I know. For example: “His face behind the windshield was sour and froglike; it looked like it had a shout closed up in it, it looked like one of those closet doors in gangster pictures where there is somebody tied to a chair behind it with a towel in his mouth.” (“The Heart of the Park”) “She jumped back and looked as if she were going to swallow her face.” (“The Peeler”)"