“Some sample lyrics I think I catch: "My engine races up to seventh gear; wrap your legs around my engine, dear . . . . The tunnel's dark, but the ground is wet; I lubricate it with my dripping sweat!"Or, something vaguely disturbing and gross like that; it's hard to tell with the wailing guitars and the front man screaming through his ravaged vocal chords.”

“Everything in the world's got a voice; most people don't hear hard enough is all. Sunrise sounds like slow chords dripping from my guitar this morning. Sad chords, in B-flat.”

“something inside me clicked, like an engine shifting into higher gear. My thinking suddenly became faster and clearer. The anger and fear didn't go away, but I realized they weren't important. They weren't going to help me...”

“My leg hurts, I wonder if it's cancer? There's a bump. I'm starting to sweat. Stop sweating. I've got to stop sweating.Can she see it dripping down my forehead? She looked at my hair line. She thinks I'm bald.”

“It felt as if I was suddenly walking around in wet socks, weighing my feet down as if two kids were sitting on my feet with their legs wrapped around mine.”

“I was ten when I heard the music that ended the first phase of my life and cast me hurtling towards a new horizon. Drenched to the skin, I stood on Dunoon’s pier peering seawards through diagonal rain, looking for the ferry that would take me home. There, on the everwet west coast of Scotland, I heard it: like sonic scalpels, the sounds of electric guitars sliced through the dreich weather. My body hairs pricked up like antennae. To my young ears these amplified guitars sounded angelic, for surely no man-made instrument could produce that tone. The singer couldn't be human. His voice was too clean, too pure, too resonant, as though a robot larynx were piping words through vocal chords of polished silver. The overall effect was intoxicating - a storm of drums, earthquake bass, razor-sharp guitar riffs, and soaring vocals of astonishing clarity. I knew that I was hearing the future.”