"According to Malka everybody who does this chooses Joni Mitchell, so I'm staying true to type. What can you say about Joni Mitchell? For me in my life she was the first female artist. You knew this was her art. You knew this was not something some bloke had cooked up for her. She wasn't "the singer"; this was her music. This was what she was putting across. I love the confessional aspect of it. I don't know if I can quote the words exactly, but it's something like I met someone down a dirt track road, he gave me something and took my camera to sell. It's about being in Greece or something like that. It's just all so matter of fact. People who screwed her over, people who she loved- and she just wore her heart on her sleeve. That's amazing, to do that. She's not hiding anything; she's just saying what's going on. There's a line "the times when you impress me the most are the times when you don't really try". As a spotty young man, to hear a woman say that was like, well maybe some girls might like me at some point, and maybe I don't need to try too hard because they'll like me for being me. It was a piece of information I needed to hear, I think."

"One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I’ve seen it three times, is Bondarchuk’s War and Peace. Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era. I’d be happy to see it again — it is, however, 12 hours long. It took 10 years to make, and some actors lived and died during the period of making the movie. It’s a little bit influenced by being a ’60s film, so it’s got a bit of a trippy edge to it; it’s a little bit abstract. But it has some of the finest examples of Russian acting of that era. I was profoundly affected by the Russian theater and the style of Russian acting. It was shot on cameras and film stock that we simply never have access to. If I’m not mistaken, during the opening credits the camera is in a cosmonaut’s space capsule being shot into Earth. It’s probably the biggest crane shot of all time. At first you think, “Well this is going to be tedious,” but stay with it and I think you’ll find yourself drawn in. And the girl who played Natasha [Lyudmila Savelyeva] is a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn and she’s one of the most luminous stars that ever found herself on the screen."