"Then I’ll go with Ikiru by Kurosawa. The scene about a man who died. The opening scene is like, “Oh, this guy died — let’s talk about his life.” And then it goes back. It is, you know, it was made in the ’50s and it was hard to get good prints of it, but now the Criterion Blu-ray is out and it looks a lot better. It’s just a beautiful movie, astonishingly; the movie and the message."

"I enjoy sci-fi thanks to my brother John's passion for it, and this was the first sci-fi book to hit my radar. It touches on so many things: politics, religion, paganism, revivalism, psychokinesis – and it even introduced a couple of things that didn't exist before: the waterbed (which came out a few years after the book), and the word "grok" which means "to understand something intuitively or by empathy.” There's a lot to grok in this book."

"When I first read Flaubert's Madame Bovary, I was some years away from being married, and still a few years away from imagining I ever would be. What did the adulteries and suicide of a doctor's wife in provincial France matter to me? A lot. As my first editor once said to me, "I've known a number of adulterous women." (I didn't doubt that he had.) "But the one I know best, and will never forget, is Emma Bovary.""

"I wanted to throw in a film as well and this is a real classic. There’s a lot to say about it but what I really love is the location. It takes place in a vaguely French/Italian/Mediterranean environment. It’s like a fantastical Amalfi coast or Cote d’Azur seen through the eyes of a Japanese genius. Like all Miyazaki, it can be appreciated by people of any age and has deep, moving insights about growing up."

"After our son Walker couch-surfed in Rio last year, we felt obliged to take in one of the Brazilian friends he met. She brought a copy of Sebastião Salgado’s beautiful but expensive book Genesis. We felt bad because she doesn’t have a lot of money and also because it is in Portuguese. However, 95% of the book consists of Salgado’s brilliant photographs, which need no translation. It seems that the people with the least often give the most."

"Now, my favorite films as a more mature person, when I was learning about what the director is and does, probably a lot of them were Howard Hawks movies, like Only Angels Have Wings and Rio Bravo. In Hawks’ world, Only Angels Have Wings and Rio Bravo are his visions of adventure stories with male groups, and men and women’s relationships, and life and death and danger. He’s developed that idea throughout his career. Those are just his beliefs."

"I found this really unnerving when I first read it at age eight. There’s a lot of talk lately about “kids’ books for adults.” But this is an adult book for kids—a realistic, complex, and not at all dumbed down look at a girl who wants more than anything else to be a writer. When I grew up and learned that Fitzhugh was a lesbian, that explained a bit more about why Harriet resonated so much for me."

"I absolutely love this film. Robert Mitchum is incredible as a serial killer roving about in the guise of a preacher. It's the only film Charles Laughton directed, which, on the evidence of this film, is a real shame, as he seemed to have a real flair for it. There are a lot of great performances, and you can't help but wonder if Laughton’s vast experience as an actor helped him get the best out of his cast."