Rob Sheffield Quotes

40 Sourced Quotes

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.

Rob Sheffield
I will always love the Clash, because I loved them so much when I was fourteen, and I love how you can start a conversation with almost literally any dude about the Clash.

Rob Sheffield
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.

Rob Sheffield
One of Renee's friends asked her, "Does your boyfriend wear glasses?" She said, "No, he wears a Walkman.

Rob Sheffield
Tonight, I feel like my whole body is made out of memories. I'm a mix-tape, a cassette that's been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape.

Rob Sheffield
The dilemma of the eighth-grade dance is that boys and girls use music in different ways. Girls enjoy music they can dance to, music with strong vocals and catchy melodies. Boys, on the other hand, enjoy music they can improve by making up filthy new lyrics.

Rob Sheffield
You know the Prince song where the girl's phone rings but she tells him, "whoever's calling couldn't be as cute as you?" I long to live out this moment in real life.

Rob Sheffield
It was like trying to break up with the color orange, or Wednesday, or silent e. It was the most passionate and tumultuous relationship I'd ever known.

Rob Sheffield
One nice thing about growing up Catholic is it makes you open-minded about other people's religions, since ours is nuttier than yours.

Rob Sheffield
Being a pop fan is a lot like Catholic devotion - lots of ritual, lots of ceremony... We touch the icon to enter the sacred space, genuflecting to reliquaries and ostentatoria that make something splendid of our most secret desires and agonies.

Rob Sheffield
It was bewildering and humbling to keep discovering how many brave things people can fail to talk themselves out of doing.

Rob Sheffield
Rock stars did not invent burning out. They just do it louder.

Rob Sheffield
I realize that I will never fully understand the millions of bizarre ways that music brings people together.

Rob Sheffield
Unlike me, Renee was not shy; she was a real people-pleaser. She worried way too much what people thought of her, wore her heart on her sleeve, expected too much from people, and got hurt too easily. She kept other people's secrets like a champ, but told her own too fast. She expected the world not to cheat her and was always surprised when it did.

Rob Sheffield
If the girls keep dancing, everybody's happy. If the girls don't dance, nobody's happy.

Rob Sheffield
It's the same with people who say, 'Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn't kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you incredibly annoying.

Rob Sheffield
I was totally clueless about social interaction, and completely scared of girls. All I knew was that music was going to make girls fall in love with me.

Rob Sheffield
I've built my whole life around loving music. I'm a writer for 'Rolling Stone,' so I am constantly searching for new bands and soaking up new sounds.

Rob Sheffield
But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies.

Rob Sheffield
Singing what's in your heart? Naming the things you love and loathe? You can get hurt that way. Hell, you will get hurt that way. But you'll get hurt trying to hide away in all that silence and leave your life unsung. There's no future without tears. Are you really setting your hopes on not getting hurt at all? You think that's an option? You clearly aren't listening to enough Morrissey songs.

Rob Sheffield
Girls take up a lot of room. I had a lot of room for this one.

Rob Sheffield
There are all kinds of mix tapes. there is always a reason to make one.

Rob Sheffield
She was the first person on either side of her family to go to college, and she held herself to insanely high standards. She worried a lot about whether she was good enough. It was surprising to see how relieved she seemed whenever I told her how amazing she was. I wanted her to feel strong and free. She was beautiful when she was free.

Rob Sheffield
Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.

Rob Sheffield
When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.

Rob Sheffield
The way I pictured it, all this grief would be like a winter night when you're standing outside. You'll warm up once you get used to the cold. Except after you've been out there for awhile, you feel the warmth draining out of you and you realize the opposite is happening; you're getting colder and colder, as the body heat you brought outside with you seeps out of your skin. Instead of getting used to it, you get weaker the longer you endure it.

Rob Sheffield
But bringing people together is what music has always done best.

Rob Sheffield
The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.

Rob Sheffield
I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language.

Rob Sheffield
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.

Rob Sheffield