Record stores can't save your life. But they can give you a better one.

There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.

Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time.

She was trying to say something else; she was trying to say that the inability to articulate what one feels in any satisfactory way is one of our enduring tragedies. It wouldn't have been much, and it wouldn't have been useful, but it would have been something that reflected the gravity and the sadness inside her. Instead, she had snapped at him for being a loser. It was as if she were trying to find a handhold on the boulder of her feelings, and had merely ended up with grit under her nails.

I've seen men like you in Doris Day films, but I never thought they existed in real life...The men who can't commit, who can't say 'I love you' even when they want to, who start to cough and sputter and change the subject. But here you are. A living, breathing specimen. Incredible.

You can wait forever for the muse to sit on your shoulder, but most of the time you know what has to be done and inspiration is not going to help you.

The truth about life was that nothing ever ended until you died, and even then you just left a whole bunch of unresolved narratives behind you.