Quotes from Rob Sheffield

It's too late to sleep anyway. The coffee's gone cold, so I just heat up another pot. Tonight, I feel like my whole body is made out of memories. I'm a mix tape, a cassette that's been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape. Press play.

Listening to music—it takes time. Human bodies respond to music over time in different ways, and that's where the surprises are.

Rod exemplifies the attitude that Losing It is no big deal. He saw that fate coming, and he was already planning to get over it.

The party never stopped at Mick's place. He categorized three phases of a good drug binge: ascending, transcending, disintegration.

Back when people listened to the radio, you kept a tape handy in your boombox at all times so you could capture the hot new hits of the week. The intro would always get cut off, and the DJ would chatter over the end. You also ended up with static, commercials, and jingles, but all that noise just added to the field-recording verisimilitude.

You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and "Money (That's What I Want)," but for me "Please Mr. Postman" houses them both. It's another blizzard of oh yeah screams—in America "Please Mr. Postman" was on The Beatles' Second Album alongside "She Loves You" and "I'll Get You," making it a concept album about the word "yeah.

Some people like to make workout tapes and take them to the gym, but I can't fathom why. Any music I hear in a gym is ruined forever.

The Chiffons had so many hits better than "He's So Fine"—"Out of This World," "Why Am I So Shy," "I Have a Boyfriend"—and it's a shame George never got around to rewriting those.) Just

Some couples stop making each other tapes—I have no idea what happens to them.

They were the daughters of the great Hollywood film noir director John Farrow, a devout Catholic as well as a boozing, brawling, womanizing piece of work. Robert Mitchum (who starred in Farrow's nastiest and best noirs, Where Danger Lives and His Kind of Woman) said he was the only director who could outdrink him. When he wasn't hitting the bar, Farrow liked to discuss theology with visiting nuns and priests.

It's the same with people who say, 'Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn't kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you incredibly annoying.

When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.

The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.

Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.

It's always that one song that gets to you. You can hide, but the song comes to find you.

There are all kinds of mix tapes. there is always a reason to make one.

I'd shut the whole world down just to tell you

Tonight, I feel like my whole body is made out of memories. I'm a mix-tape, a cassette that's been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape.

I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language.

I get sentimental over the music of the '90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I'm concerned the '90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps.

I realize that I will never fully understand the millions of bizarre ways that music brings people together.

But the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape.

Nothing connects to the moment like music. I count the music to bring me back, or more precisely, to bring her forward.

Love dies in many different ways, and it's natural for the grass to seem greener on the other side. But it's not a competition; there's plenty of pain to go around.