"Like lots of people, I really love Roxane Gay. This is one of my favorite essay collections I’ve read in the past five to ten years. She’s really good at conversational writing that’s also academic and intelligent and funny. After #MeToo there’s a lot of introspection, and people need to analyze themselves and see what feminist they’ll be. There’s no perfect feminist."

"Another film would be E.T. from Spielberg. I think somehow it’s a kind of fantasy film — very grounded in reality, very respectful of childhood. It’s a multi-layer, so the complexity of childhood — the way they portrayed a kid going through a very difficult moment in his life — I think it reminded me a lot of the kinds of movies that I love."

"If David Lynch is the American take on surrealism, this is the Soviet take. Iranians share a lot of cultural references with people from Armenia, and seeing this, I almost saw a path through Iranian culture. The movie juxtaposes surreal elements from my culture without going through a Western gaze. It has some of the most amazing imagery I’ve ever seen."