“Then, if you are an only child […] there’s a lot of time alone with your own imaginings. There is always someone or something to dream about.” – pg. 17
“I suppose I just wasn’t very good at writing happy endings.” – pg. 67
“I wanted to know how it was possible to remain invisible enough to observe the very transactions between people that were the substance of so many of my songs.” – pg. 78
“I changed every ‘I’ to ‘we,’ so as to share the blame that was entirely my own, and then changed ‘I’ to ‘he’ to further cover my tracks. This was pop music, not confession.” – pg. 96
“I wondered what it really felt like to drink a case of someone.” – pg. 120
“People make a song and dance out of inspiration.” – pg. 159
“If there’s one thing that’s worse than being lost // It’s knowing you’re so close to being found.” – pg. 182
”I got the notion that someone should be writing these songs and that it was probably me.” – pg. 186
“It was a premonition, my fear that I would not be faithful or that my disbelief in happy endings would lead me to kill the love that I had longed for.” – pg. 187
“Songs can be many things: an education, a seduction, some solace in heartache, a valve for anger, a passport, your undoing, or even a lottery ticket.” – pg. 203
“Words had always been my friends. Now I had betrayed them.” – pg. 337
“We would either thrill or amaze or disappoint and disgrace and then get out of town.” – pg. 347
”Life takes much longer than the average pop song. […] It is much more painful and less easily forgiven.” – pg. 361
“Can a mere song change people’s minds? I doubt that it is so, but a song can infiltrate your heart and the heart may change your mind.” – pg. 393
“There is music that seems to belong to you the moment that you hear it, and music about which you must be patient, awaiting the hour when it may reveal itself to you.” – pg. 401
“The past is never that far away.” – pg. 415
”I’d only held it all together because I didn’t know how to let it fall apart.” – pg. 436
“Unhappy people are sometimes the last to see the trap that they have sprung.” – pg. 510
“People who are looking for profundity in every gesture often miss the sense of humor that keeps the working day alive.” – pg. 553
“It hadn’t been easy to find my way out the door, but when I was outside again I realized that everything had been in plain sight all along.” – pg. 581
“The danger of regarding any point in the past as the golden age is that you forget that there were […] just as many terrible records. We only recall the ones we love.” – pg. 647
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