"A lush formal return to the 1970’s Mexico City of Cuaron’s youth and life with his maids. I can’t get First-time actor Yalitza Aparicio’s wide open face out of my mind – she is the film for me. The father, and then the mother parking the Ford Galaxy is beautiful, frustrated and funny. But it is the scene on the beach with the near drowning that brings us to where Cuaron was headed all along. The family protecting itself. A wonderful world of women."

"Another example of someone operating outside normal parameters. Matt’s actually a friend of mine. He was a journalist and he’s this crazy, wonderful, funny, neurotic guy and he made this record and when I listened to it, I had the same feeling I get when I listen to Trout Mask Replica. When you listen to anyone: Tom Waits, Devin Townsend or Led Zeppelin, you can hear the influences, but when you listen to The History Of Now you are hearing something that is truly unique, I think."

"This book led me to all of her others and for that I am forever grateful. Her stories are cruel and sad and funny and very hard to put down. Highsmith has a very original perspective on the world—and it's not pretty. Her work is filled with fascinating sociopaths and lonely eccentrics, regular people like us revealing themselves to be sick or tortured in a variety of ways. She kind of feels like a sociologist; one who draws deeply dark and creepy conclusions."

"This is such a simple and funny movie that tells what is at its core a very sad story about a young woman trapped in Communist Czechoslovakia. The actors and faces that Milos Forman cast in all the roles are fantastic and real, and the young piano player’s tired and fed-up parents are two of the funniest, most subtle characters I’ve ever seen in a movie. This is one of my favorite movies to turn people on to, since very few people have ever seen it."

"I read these out loud quite often. The letters are gathered from such a diverse range of people, from Steve Martin to Napoleon, and David Bowie to Mary, Queen of Scots—in this case on the night of her execution. There are love letters, letters of state, there’s a particularly funny one from a British ambassador to Moscow. They are tiny chinks of light into all these different lives, from Charlie Chaplin to Hitler. Each letter is reproduced as a facsimile of the original."