Couchsurfing has made it possible for me to gain some experiences I could not have gotten elsewhere. It really opens up a world of its own, I think, and one gets to meet people from so many different walks of life and learn their stories.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Felice Cohen, Charles Baudelaire, Ann McMan, André Brink, Radclyffe, Milena McKay, Macon Leigh, Sylvia Plat, any and all literature relating to the Fermi paradox, Catch-22 by J. Heller. Shawshank Redemption, the Departed, Inside Man, Jackie Brown, Chinatown, A Beautiful Mind, 21.