"My wife, Sofia, recently published her first book. I'm incredibly proud of her for all her hard work and dedication in writing this and don't know how she did this whilst being a great mom to our both daughters. The book is about her experiences being a young western woman living and doing business in a dictatorship, and it's a story of love and hustle in a land where nothing is what it appears to be."

"I can’t leave out Kubrick. I think my favorite Kubrick movie is kind of tied between A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. The Shining meant a lot to me. It was the first movie that made me really want to act. I love Jack Nicholson in that movie. I didn’t know who Jack Nicholson was at the time — I was like 11 when I saw it, but something about what he was doing in that movie just fascinated me."

"In turns moving and funny, Backman’s novel ventures into the life of Ove, a man in late middle age who has adapted to his lonely new world by becoming, frankly, a crabby old fart. But I wager that you’ll soon fall in love with Ove and be deeply moved by his situation, and after spending time with him, may perhaps gaze at the world around you with a little more empathy than when you turned the first page."

"They’re not peers, they’re older, but when I came to New York to college I interned at the studio they used to run in Harlem. This first LP came out before I went to college, and it had such a distinct, reverby, warm sound. I love every song. It’s the band I’ve paid most in my life to go see. This LP is one of the best things to come out of New York in 10 years."