"Is this pretentious? I don’t care, whatever. I read Moby Dick in college and it dissolved my brain and re-grew me a new one, and I read it again this year and let me tell you it lives up to the hype! Is anything as gorgeous as Melville's prose? “For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life”? Are you kidding me, Herman??????"

"Frank Ocean is someone who has this great storytelling style that really takes you from the beginning to the end and helps to open my mind to ways of relaying an emotion. Whenever I play this record it reminds me of my first anniversary, driving in a vintage Corvette that we rented. We blasted the album the whole way. Some of my favorites are 'Swim Good' and the lyrics of the song 'We All Try' always move me. It's such a hopeful song with deep sentiment—at the heart of it, we're all trying to do our best. And that's so true."

"It’s the first album in two years that I’m totally enthralled and inspired by. I don’t know if it’s because of his [Josh Homme’s] near-death experience - Josh did nearly die on the operating table, during a simple operation that went wrong - but the lyrics are really a massive leap. James [Dean Bradfield, Manics guitarist] and Sean [Moore, drummer] have always loved Queens but I’ve never been a massive fan, then this album really got to me. There’s a track called ‘If I Had A Tail’ that’s almost got an In Utero feel to it. The drums are massive, the lyrics are brilliant: ‘I Appear Missing’ what a title! ‘I Sat By The Ocean’ is a bit like ‘Ocean Spray’, it’s got the same sort of bassline. The first time I heard it absolutely blew me away, the musicianship on it is fucking astounding as well. It makes you feel quite defeated. There’s a desert dryness to it as well - anyone who’s been in hospital will relate to it, it has a bare whiteness to it. It’s forensic. It’s actually a really earthy album, but not earthy like Crosby, Stills and Nash. Earthy like you’re lying there having an out-of-body experience. I’ve struggled over the last two years, I’ve loved loads of songs and records, but there’s been no albums that actually sound like an album - this one does."

"Wings of Desire, by Wim Wenders. The guy who wrote the screenplay, Peter Handke, is a playwright in Germany, and I was very much a part of reading the avant garde writers, be it plays or novels. I loved his writing, it was so strong and so sharp, and when the film came out, I just loved it. Everything about it was marvelous. Bruno Ganz was so brilliant. He’s brilliant most of the time. On our side of the ocean, let’s say, he was one of our stars, like Redford and Paul Newman and Brando were on that side. I had a few European actors where I went, “They’re so fantastic.”"

"The most piercing, most beautiful sea tale I’ve read. Told almost entirely through dialogue—through Caribbean dialect, no less, where “Captain” becomes “Copm”—with the sparest possible narration, as precise as haiku, and pictographs, inkblots, great tracts of white space on the page. Nine working men set sail on an old schooner out of Grand Cayman, hunting green turtles. They talk to fill the ocean silence, their speech unattributed, and the drama circles and tightens. “Green turtle very mysterious, mon.” The characters sharpen into high suspense and tragedy. Matthiessen’s touch, his ear, his eye, his taut presence just outside the story’s frame—all miraculous, mon."