"This is my favorite Fellini film because it’s the one I identify with the most. On the surface, Cabiria has her act together. She insists on working for herself. She owns her own house and has savings. Even when she’s feeling awed by a big movie star, she stands up for herself and yells at him when he orders her around. But the instant she’s alone, vulnerability and self-doubt are written all over her face, and she is at the world’s mercy. Throughout the film, you feel everything Cabiria feels. For me, one of the most horrifying shots of all time is one in which Cabiria is sitting in a restaurant displaying her gigantic bundle of money to the man who is going to steal it. When I showed the film to my mother, she was traumatized by that image as well and kept saying, “I couldn’t stand to see her holding that huge money!”"

"The best book I’ve ever received as a gift was actually the best gift I ever received from my mother, too. When I was young, she gave me “Letters: Summer 1926,” about the three-way correspondence between Rainer Maria Rilke, Marina Tsvetayeva and Boris Pasternak. Three brilliant minds that had never met, all writing sonnets and passionate letters to each other for four years, eventually falling in love with each other through this correspondence. Seeing this love triangle unfold through actual letters was very exciting for me as a young girl. Later in life, I met Susan Sontag, and she told me she wanted to give me a new edition of a book for which she had recently written the foreword. You can understand my surprise when I discovered it was this very same book. She was always giving me books over the course of our friendship, but this one is the most precious to me, especially since she is no longer with us"