“The best customers are the ones who just have to buy a record on a Saturday, even if there's nothing they really want; unless they go home clutching a flat, square carrier bag, they feel uncomfortable. You can spot the vinyl addicts because after a while they get fed up with the rack they are flicking through, march over to a completely different section of the shop, pull a sleeve out from the middle somewhere, and come over to the counter; this is because they have been making a list of possible purchases in their head ("If I don't find anything in the next five minutes, that blues compilation I saw half an hour ago will have to do"), and suddenly sicken themselves with the amount of time they have wasted looking for something they don't really want.”

“Even though we get a lot of people into the shop, only a small percentage of them buy anything. The best customers are the ones who just have to buy a record on a Saturday, even if there’s nothing they really want; unless they go home clutching a flat, square carrier bag they feel uncomfortable. You can spot the vinyl addicts because after a while they get fed up with the rack they are flicking through, march over to a completely different section of the shop, pull a sleeve out from the middle somewhere, and come over to the counter; this is because they have been making a list of possible purchases in their head (‘If I don’t find anything in the next five minutes, that blues compilation I saw half an hour ago will have to do’), and suddenly sicken themselves with the amount of time they have wasted looking for something that they don’t really want. I know that feeling well (these are my people, and I understand them better than I understand anybody in the world): it is a prickly, clammy, panicky sensation, and you go out of the shop reeling. You walk much more quickly afterwards, trying to recapture the part of the day that has escaped, and quite often you have the urge to read the international section of a newspaper, or go to see a Peter Greenaway film, to consume something solid and meaty which will lie on top of the candyfloss worthlessness clogging up your head.”

“You don't have to wait for happiness, because there's no time but now to be happy. You don't have to go somewhere else, because there's no place but here to find it. You don't have to do something else, because there's nothing more to it. You don't have to get something else, because everything you already have is enough. You just have to be happy. ...”

“We play a show, and there's a hundred people, and people will say "You must miss playing to a thousand people." But I don't. I might miss playing. That's what I would miss, but I don't miss it, because I am playing. I feel completely fortunate to have this outlet for something I don't really feel like I have a choice in, to make music. I've got to make it. And the fact that people care enough to want to come see me make it, or buy a recording, or want to call me up to talk about it? Fuck, man, I think that is gravy.”

“I don't know if I can face this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that.""You don't have to go to the party. You don't have to go to the ceremony. You don't have to do anything at all.""But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another. I'm so sick.”

“As awkward as this moment is, I'm intrigued with the possibilities of what this could mean. Gray Porter holding up my bangs while I memorize the depth of his chin divot ranks at the top of my things-that-have-overly-surprised me list! I don't really have such a list. But when I get home, I'm making one.”