"I read this as a young student, and I thought you had to be me or one of my friends to appreciate the raw humor and sweet sadness. So I was surprised when my father picked up my book when I was home for summer holiday, and I saw him sitting in his reading chair, laughing out loud. It’s a bit like your parents copying your playlist and actually digging it; you're not sure whether you should feel invaded or proud."

"During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau’s essay On Civil Disobedience for the first time. Here, in this courageous New Englander’s refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery’s territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times."

"I revisit this book all the time because it’s so laugh-out-loud funny and stars two totally unique main characters. A grad assistant heroine trying to move on from the past finds herself at odds with a stubborn, ex-army student. (He’s also an amputee, and I love seeing disabled main characters in romance.) Their enemies-to-lovers snark has me screaming every time. And when they finally do get together…whew. Approach with caution and consider wearing heat-resistant equipment." """

"Moore is completely unsentimental but able to stir enormous feelings in the reader, or, certainly, in me. Her style is so original: The way this book is structured, the narrative is like an anagram. It begins with Benna, a singer, and her neighbor Gerard. The characters in each succeeding chapter have the same names, but they're different people. In one, she's a schoolteacher and he's a graduate student. I've never read a book where the identity is the same but always changing."

"As a young student living in Dublin, I always thought it vaguely pretentious that I should be reading Joyce. But I couldn’t even begin to start with “Ulysses,” and then I discovered “Dubliners,” and thought, this is perfect, this is my kind of thing: An evocative but simple style of writing. I was so delighted for myself: “I’ve read Joyce, I can tick that off my list of smart things I should be doing.” It was just such a surprise to find it accessible."

"I could’ve chosen any [Robert] Altman film from that golden period. M*A*S*H was just mindblowingly exciting as… I think I was a drama student, probably, at the time, so all those Altman films that came: Nashville, McCabe and Mrs Miller, California Split. I just loved his work, so McCabe and Mrs Miller — that whole world he created I just thought was magnificent, and the Leonard Cohen music and the beauty of the winter up in Alaska or wherever it was. It was great."