"A little Whiplash anecdote is, of course, like everybody else, I had no idea who Damien Chazelle was. Jason Reitman was the one who sent me the script, in an email, for Whiplash. He sent me both the short and the feature script and just said, “Read this,” and obviously it’s from Jason so I’m gonna read it. It was again, obviously, probably one of the most brilliant scripts I had ever read and one of the best fits in terms of the character that I really immediately understood and felt like I could wrap my brain around and pull off. They said, “The writer-director would love to meet you,” and we set up a lunch, and Damien and I sat down and immediately basically agreed on everything, except he didn’t know that I had a musical background, so he was talking about how we’d have body doubles and we’d have somebody coaching me on how to wave my arms around like a conductor. And I said, “Hey, we don’t need that because actually, that’s one of the arrows I have in my quiver.” That was one of those moments where it felt like kismet, that Damien was like, “Oh, my God.” He said, “When Jason and Helen suggested you for this part, I immediately thought that’s a great idea, but I had no idea that you actually had those kinds of abilities.” And also, he didn’t write the script for me, but he wrote it with Miles Teller in mind from the beginning, and didn’t know that Miles had been playing drums since he was 15 years old."

"Okay, so I knew Lauren Oliver was a good writer, but damn! They weren't kidding when they compared this book to "The Tale of Desperaux" (which I also loved!) or "The Graveyard Book" (which I didn't finish, but found a scene very similar to the opening - it involved Bod Fading/Vanishing). Oliver's just a great storyteller, I had just gotten the book early morning at BEA and found that while waiting on line, I kept searching through my multiple tote bags to find this one so I can take advantage of the reading time instead of mingling with other fans on line. This hadn't happened to me for the two days I was there. My favorite characters were easily Liesl, Po, BUNDLE! and Will - who are the four obvious go-to-characters to have as your favorites, but their narratives were great. Different to Oliver's other novels, she wrote in third person and covered other characters beside her main, going so far to write about a guard named Mo (short for Molasses since he's so slow) and Mrs. Snout, owner of Snout's Inn and Restaurant. I'm excited to put this in the hands of my middle-grade peeps come this October, but any other lover of Lauren Oliver or YA will appreciate this story just as much. It has heart, deals with grief, and delivers questions about the Other Side as Oliver freshly explores it. "On the third night after the day her father died, Liesl saw the ghost." You'll ineffably thank me for recommending this. It's hands-down one of my favorite middle-grade stories and I'm already desperately eager to reread it."

"What a beautiful guy. He was so sweet. I mean, every song he’s done is my favourite. You can’t go wrong with them. Some of the songs aren’t as good as others but most of the ones he wrote with Joe Melson and Bill Dees are great. I’ve just recorded ‘Running Scared’ for my new album, Longwave, and he once told me that ‘Running Scared’ was his personal favourite of all the songs he’d ever done. I actually got to work with Roy and be his pal and be his producer and his co-writer on a song called ‘You Got It’ which was a big hit in America and here too. So that was a big thrill for him to have a hit. And it was his first hit in 20 years and we’d done it together and that was a great, marvellous feeling. In real life, he was actually a very funny guy. And he could do all Monty Python sketches on his own! He did all the parts! When we were doing Wilburys videos, we’d be going in a van to Grand Union Station in LA to film ‘Handle With Care’ and he’d be doing Monty Python sketches. And he’s got this enormous and most infectious giggle you’ve ever heard and we’d all be giggling like schoolgirls after a minute or two and all fucking fall about! He was a lovely guy and if he was sad he never showed it. When Roy died we did talk about getting someone else in but we thought that nobody could replace Roy Orbison."