I get sentimental over the music of the ’90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I’m concerned the ’90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps.

'Drive,' that's the one. I love dozens of songs by R.E.M., but that's the one, even though it took me 7 or 8 years to start liking it.

'The Queen Is Dead' is not merely the Smiths' best album, but it is one of those timeless, perfect, inexhaustible artifacts that could only have been made by a gang of sullen, sun-deprived rock & roll boys fighting off adulthood tooth and nail.

A song nobody likes is a sad thing. But a love song nobody likes is hardly a thing at all.

Not being able to protect her from things was the most frightening thing I'd ever felt, and it kicked in as soon as we got together. With every year we spent together, I became more conscious that I now had an infinitely expanding number of reasons to be afraid. I had something to lose.

Every moment of my life has a soundtrack, so I never know when some song is going to jump me by surprise and bring the memory alive.

Love dies in many different ways, and it's natural for the grass to seem greener on the other side. But it's not a competition; there's plenty of pain to go around.