Quotes from Rob Sheffield

Somtimes you lie in a strange room, in a strange person's home, and you feel yourself bending out of shape. Melting, touching something hot, something that warps you in drastic and probably irreversible ways you won't get to take stock of until its too late

Not being able to protect her from things was the most frightening thing I'd ever felt, and it kicked in as soon as we got together. With every year we spent together, I became more conscious that I now had an infinitely expanding number of reasons to be afraid. I had something to lose.

But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies.

Morrissey was my Mrs. Garrett, the house mother from the Facts of Life, a soothing adult figure giving me words of wisdom.

I was totally clueless about social interaction, and completely scared of girls. All I knew was that music was going to make girls fall in love with me.

If all music did was bring the past alive, that would be fine. You can hide away in music and let it recapture memories of things that used to be. But music is greedy and it wants more of your heart than that. It demands the future, your future. Music wants the rest of your life. So you can't rest easy. At any moment, a song can come out of nowhere to shake you up, jump-start your emotions, ruin your life.

It's a fundamental human need to pass music around, and however the technology evolves, the music keeps moving.

I keep my friends around, try to stay close to them, try to treat them right. I try to stay in touch with my friends who are far away, and I do a bad job of that, but I carry them with me.

In my headphones, I led a life of romance and incident and intrigue, none of which had anything to do with the world outside my Walkman.

The Stones suggested that if you dabble in decadence, you could turn into a devil-worshipping junkie. Paul McCartney suggested that if you mess around with girl worship, you could turn into a husband. So Paul was a lot scarier.

I have built my entire life around loving music, and I surround myself with it. I'm always racing to catch up on my next favorite song. But I never stop playing my mixes. Every fan makes them. 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 add up to the story of a life.

By the time you're an adult, you're used to seeing your friends disappear into their five-year plans. They drop out to get married, have babies, go to grad school, get divorced. They start a band or enter the penal system. They vanish for years at a time - some come back, some don't. Some of them you wait for and some you let go. Sometimes the only way they come back is in a song.

I knew I would have to relearn how to listen to music, and that some of the music we'd loved together I'd never be able to hear again.

You have blundered into an adult existence you don't understand, and you can't tell whether you planned it this way or whether you screwed up big-time, though it's too late either way.

I don't know what your type is. I don't know what your deal is. I don't even know if you have a boyfriend. I know I like you and I want to be in your life, that's it, and if you have any room for a boyfriend, I would like to be your boyfriend, and if you don't have any room, I would like to be your friend. Any room you have for me in your life is great. If you would like me to start out in one room and move to another, I could do that.

Monogamous musicians are like vegan hockey players.

I was too young to know adult life is full of accidents and interrupted moments and empty beds you climb into and don't climb out of.

Some of us are born Gladys Knights, and some of us are born Pips.

I was the only kid at Camp Don Bosco who would admit he was an alter boy back home, so I served two masses a day all summer. But I loved the cassock and surplice, ringing the bells, lighting the candles - it was like being a glamrock roadie for God.

Falling in love with Renée was not the kind of thing you walk away from in one piece. I had no chance. She put a hitch in my git-along. She would wake up in the middle of the night and say things like "What if Bad Bad Leroy Brown was a girl?" or "Why don't they have commercials for salt like they do for milk?" Then she would fall back to sleep, while I would lie awake and give thanks for this alien creature beside whom I rested.

Like any teenager who reads The Great Gatsby, probably, I was madly in love with the teacher who had opened it up for me.

The reality of boy-girl life gets harsh, but in my fantasy, the music keeps them together.

In some circles, admitting you love Top 40 radio is tantamount to bragging you gave your grandmother the clap, in church, in the front row at your aunt's funeral, but those are the circles I avoid like the plague or, for that matter, the clap.

Jesus H. Christ on ice and Mary in the penalty box!