"Number four would be a movie called The Piano Teacher by Michael Haneke. That’s a really interesting character study to me, and that is my other favorite on-screen performance, Isabelle Huppert. I just think it’s a really, really interesting character study; again, disturbing. I guess there’s a theme here. [laughs] And her last frame of acting in that movie — not actually the last frame; the last frame is her walking, but the one before that is the best piece of acting I’ve ever seen in my entire life. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you have to go watch it."

"I discovered Christopher Isherwood in college. His writing style is so direct, warm, and inclusive. There's one passage in this book, published in 1964, that has really stayed with me — the description of America. The narrator is a British man teaching at a California college. He and a few colleagues are having a conversation, and an American woman is saying how romantic Mexico is. She's critical of America. The protagonist argues with her, talking about the virtues of the United States. He says that its beauty is in its abstraction. I thought that was an amazing insight — possibly true and compelling at least."

"This came in the wake of Remain In Light as a side project. I'd seen Talking Heads at Eric's, which was my world back then. Although slightly older people said it was like Can and introducing sound collages, I didn't think Can were that funky, but this is. It was quite an amazing album really, and freaked everybody out when it was released. 'The Jezebel Spirit' and 'America Is Waiting', I guess, were the standout tracks that I got, but the end track ['Mountain Of Needles'] as well, which had slowed-down sounds and voices. I thought it was brilliant."

"I was obsessed with the video Spike Jonze made for the Björk song “It’s Oh So Quiet.” When I heard he had made a movie, I couldn’t wait to see it. I fell in love with the world he created and all the unusual rules that came with it. I was so on board and wanted to go wherever he and Charlie Kaufman wanted to take me. Watching this movie was the first time I became aware of Catherine Keener (I was slow to discover Walking and Talking). I could not take my eyes off her."