"I saw this when I was very young. It was the first Fellini film I ever saw, and it is without a doubt my favorite Fellini film. There’s so much pathos in it. I love Nights of Cabiria, but for me this is Giulietta Masina at her best. Casting her as a clown—with her expressiveness and over-the-top facial expressions still feeling so grounded—combines realism and spectacle in one person. To me, that makes her one of the greatest of all time. When I can’t get to sleep at night and I don’t want to start a new book, I’ll put this on, and if I stay awake for the whole thing until five o’clock in the morning, I’ll be okay being tired the next day, knowing that I watched it."

"I saw this when I was very young. It was the first Fellini film I ever saw, and it is without a doubt my favorite Fellini film. There’s so much pathos in it. I love Nights of Cabiria, but for me this is Giulietta Masina at her best. Casting her as a clown—with her expressiveness and over-the-top facial expressions still feeling so grounded—combines realism and spectacle in one person. To me, that makes her one of the greatest of all time. When I can’t get to sleep at night and I don’t want to start a new book, I’ll put this on, and if I stay awake for the whole thing until five o’clock in the morning, I’ll be okay being tired the next day, knowing that I watched it."

"Confessions Of A Sex Kitten was so major. Eartha Kitt is a huge possibility idol for me. The thing about women like Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne, and Diahann Carroll — these black artists in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s — they were making a way out of no way. Eartha’s book, the first paragraph of it I was bawling. It’s just so deep! Her love life I can so relate to as a trans woman. She dated a lot of white men, who dated her privately. They would neverdate her openly or marry her. That’s something I can certainly relate to as a trans woman. She is brilliant and amazing and sexy and smart and political! She was blacklisted for like 10 years. Eartha Kitt is everything, may she rest in peace."

"This Is Spinal Tap. Let’s put that one on there. This list is gonna get really long in a minute. I mean, I love all of Christopher Guest’s movies, but I’ll put that one up there. I could easily say Best in Show as well. I don’t know, there’s just something about the Britishness of the rock and roll, which has always made me laugh, in a way. It seems to say a lot about the age that I grew up in and just before I came along. At the age I first saw it, I was very right for watching a satire about the ’70s and ’80s and a culture that had just come before, I guess. The performances are so delightful. I also really like Waiting for Guffman. God, he’s wonderful director."

"Wallace is not for everyone, but he is for me. My blind spot in my own work is ‘the evil that men do.’ I think I know a thing or two about the way people love, but I don’t know anything about hatred, psychosis, cruelty. Or maybe I don’t have the guts to admit that I do. Wallace writes brilliantly about hideous men and hideous women and the hideous culture that produces them. Reading Wallace for the first time was also about the hideous revelation of a talent a lot bigger than mine. You can take it when the competition is dead people—it’s harder when they’re alive. Wallace’s prose has brought me as much envy as it has joy over the years. He makes me more ambitious for myself."

"What can I say about The Third Man that hasn’t already been said? This is the first film that made me look at movies in a new way. It made me fall in love with everything about them. You’ve got to hand it to Carol Reed for making a movie that is all about a character (Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles) who doesn’t even show up until three-quarters of the way in. The Anton Karas score remains one of the best ever for a film. I bought a zither just to learn to play Harry Lime’s theme. If I’m having a hard time getting into working, I often put The Third Man on in the background, as it always puts me in a mysterious and creative mood. The music is truly upbeat."