224 Quotes by Rob Sheffield

The important thing isn’t that we’re freakazoidal about the same things – it’s that she’s as freakazoidal about her stuff as I am about mine, and that enthusiasm can’t help but unite us, even if the object thereof doesn’t. If two people are twisted enough to connect on a deep level, it’s only natural there will be lots of angles where they don’t connect at all.

But if you listen to outtakes from the sessions, you can hear the Beatles worked out harmonies for “Eight Days a Week” – beautiful harmonies, in fact. Yet they cut the harmonies and sang in unison, to make the song sound like it took less work than it did. They spent seven hours in the studio tinkering with “Eight Days a Week,” adding and subtracting, until they got that unrehearsed feel. So much guile went into making the song sound like a moment’s exhalation.

But being born on the same planet as the Beatles is one of the ten best things that’s ever happened to me.

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.

The Word ‘Repulse’: I hate this word. I believe ‘repel’ is a perfectly good word, and ‘repulsion’ is the noun, as well as the title of an excellent Dinosaur Jr. song. A compulsion compels you; an impulse impels you. Nobody ever says ‘compulse’ or ‘impulse’ as a verb. So why would you ever say ‘repulse’? This word haunts me in my sleep, like a silver dagger dancing before my eyes. Renee looked it up and I was wrong. But I still kind of think I’m right.

You can’t beat the beehive for glam punkette attitude.

I believe that when you’re making a mix, you’re making history.

I was a wallflower who planned to stay that way, who never imagined anybody else to be.

When you’re a Catholic kid, the nuns teach you that when something is annoying you, you “offer it up”, as a sacrificial gift.