Rob Sheffield

I loved the cassock and surplice, ringing the bells, lighting the candles—it was like being a glam-rock roadie for God.

was wasted, not on drugs, but on something possibly worse.

my second response was, I need some new sounds to remember. I’ve been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I’m spinning through the same sounds I’ve been hearing in my head all my life.

. The only one who remembers any of my sounds is me. How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people?

told me I looked like Dr. Robert from the Blow Monkeys. No girl ever told me I looked like anything before.

I made her a tape called Cic-cone Island Baby. She made me a tape called Jumpin’ Sylvia Plath, It’s a Gas Gas Gas. It was love, obviously.

Love makes me do foolish things. I was lucky to learn early.

Falling in love with Renée was not the kind of thing you walk away from in one piece

She was in the middle of everything, living her big, messy, epic life, and none of us who loved her will ever catch up with her.

Suddenly, I got all tangled up in this girl’s noisy, juicy, sparkly life