"Renoir’s humanity. The depth of his characters: who is that behind the large woman who plays the piano? Even he has a story. The miraculous way Renoir captures the sky in black and white. The breadth of what he’s truly portraying; the world on the edge of the volcano."

"This is from an amazing live album called Emergency Ward that I found in a record store not long ago. This George Harrison cover has such a powerful vocal performance from Nina with this big dynamic piano backing her up for about 11 minutes. There's something really meditative about it."

"If David Thewlis in Naked is my favorite male performance, then Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher must be my favorite female performance. I saw this with my mom at the theater when I was about fourteen or fifteen and we both loved it so much. I remember thinking, I want to make movies like that. I’ve always felt that the first films he made in Austria, especially the trilogy (The Seventh Continent, Benny’s Video, and 71 Fragments), were a little too academic. He really avoided performances. But when he moved over to France with Code Unknown and then The Piano Teacher, something happened where he started making very passionate filmmaking. The actors are giving great performances while still being very clinical and brutal in their rejection of sentimentality."

"Like Mulatu Astake, this is just music that's in its own universe. I don't really know how to play the piano - I never took lessons or anything - so it's all just based on music that I like, but a few songs on Oh My God are definitely influenced by her way of playing, this really quick hammering on the keys, that's kind of unconventional. “I was on tour and we went to visit our friend Heidi in Amsterdam. She had a record on a small, little portable record player and it was playing Emahoy’s music. It was this beautiful piano music and I felt like I'd never heard anything like it. The scene was really nice: she was hanging clothes up in the backyard. it was a nice day out and it just hit me really hard. I asked her ' What is this?' and then I became obsessed with it."

"I love Tom Lehrer, I love a lot of writers of funny songs. I like Noël Coward, I like Flanders and Swann and Tom Lehrer is probably the best and funniest. Incredibly intelligent man and he's well aware of the idiocy of what he's doing. Each song lasts for about 1 minute 45 seconds, because it's like, "Here's the joke, go!", it's really good. I think I was about 26 or 27 when I first heard him. I think it might have been 'The Elements', when he set the list of elements to the Gilbert and Sullivan tune, 'I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General' is the original from The Pirates Of Penzance - I like Gilbert and Sullivan as well! I think I also liked the idea of one man and a piano, being a bit of an entertainer. I finally got up the nerve to do that myself, five or six years ago, and it's been jolly good fun. I was nervous about it, but knew it was a good time to do it. I had a few songs off that album (Bang Goes The Knighthood) that were suited to it. I did have to do an awful lot of practice to get up to standard on the piano, because I did grade one piano, and then gave up - I'm really completely untutored. So I have a bizarre technique, but it gets me through."

"I like Hannah and Her Sisters. I’m a really big Woody Allen fan. I love all his stuff except for the crap. Ironically, I always wanted to be in a Woody Allen movie, and I was, but it was a movie he just acted in, Picking up the Pieces. It was the worst movie I was ever in. Everybody in it was a big star, was some name, Alfonso Arau was the director, Vittorio Storaro was the DP. It was like all the world’s best ingredients mixed in a cup full of vomit. I couldn’t even watch me, that’s how bad it was. But Hannah and Her Sisters. I just love the multiple storylines going on, and then Woody Allen gets soft at the end, and it becomes sentimental. But the thing I really liked was the piano score, the acoustic piano score that runs throughout. It’s really the thing that ties it together, emotionally. I thought"

"This album was introduced to me by John Legend who actually played the title song for me while we were writing—he played it on the piano and sang it at first. It was so striking, I said, 'What is that?" And then he played me the actual record and it instantly became a favorite for me. The way her voice breaks is so moving. She totally caught pure honesty and that's inspiring."

"When I listen to jazz, it's usually the piano guys – Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk. I'll put this on in any context: on tour when I'm sleeping, at home when I'm cooking, after a gig. When Joey comes offstage, he wants to play something loud and continue to rock, whereas I need to decompress a little more. So, depending on who gets to the music player first, it's either AC/DC or Bill Evans."