“The New York Dolls were toweringly influential. They were way ahead of their time, although always reliably late at the hairdressers.”

“I left London to migrate to Manchester because at that time it was -- if you had a personality disorder and a good record collection -- the most interesting place to be in the world.”

“There followed three years in which I became a semi-respectable commuter, rising with everybody else and frequently being stranded on a Central Line train with revolting strangers due to signalling problems. It was difficult because doing anything en masse just goes against my nature.”

“If there were a god of New York, it would be the Greek's Hermes, the Roman's Mercury. He embodies New York qualities: the quick exchange, the fastness of language and style, craftiness, the mixing of people and crossing of borders, imagination.”

“The New York Times Review of Books is toilet paper. Used.”

“Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn't mean that all stories have to, even if that's what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Review. In fact, it's a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from another.”

“New York has collapsed.”