"It seems to me that one thing we should be trying to keep in mind these days is the phrase, “It could be worse.” This book shows us a much-worse time and its tragic effects on a group of tender friends/lovers/artists. We should energetically protect our system, and try to heal the toxic divisiveness afflicting us, and resist the lies being routinely promulgated, from above and on social media, because when a system fails, the victim is human decency – all these dear hearts suddenly living reduced, fearful, degrading lives. We have, as Paul Simon put it, “lived so well, so long” that we may be in danger of forgetting that the results of chaos are real."

"“I hope to build a house with my films,” Fassbinder famously said. “Some of them are the cellar, some are the walls, and some are the windows. But I hope in time there will be a house.” For me, the front door to that house is The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. I first watched it when I was home from college one December, and my young and impressionable mind was instantly changed. The use of long takes, the meticulous, ever-moving camera direction, the outlandish costumes, the emotional cruelty, the wigs . . . Fassbinder finds beauty in despair, and despair in beauty, but ultimately knows that the real truth lies in the costume changes."