quotes by Rob Sheffield

"When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"There are all kinds of mix tapes. there is always a reason to make one."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"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 (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"It's always that one song that gets to you. You can hide, but the song comes to find you."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"I'd shut the whole world down just to tell you"
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"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 (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"When you stick a song on a tape, you set it free."
— Rob Sheffield

"Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"But for me, if we're talking about romance, cassettes wipe the floor with MP3s. This has nothing to do with superstition, or nostalgia. MP3s buzz straight to your brain. That's part of what I love about them. But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy human bodies. The cassette is full of tape hiss and room tone; it's full of wasted space, unnecessary noise. Compared to the go-go-go rhythm of an MP3, mix tapes are hopelessly inefficient. You go back to a cassette the way a detective sits and pours drinks for the elderly motel clerk who tells stories about the old days--you know you might be somewhat bored, but there might be a clue in there somewhere. And if there isn't, what the hell? It's not a bad time. You know you will waste time. You plan on it."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"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

"But the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"I was helpless in trying to return people's kindness, but also helpless to resist it. Kindness is a scarier force than cruelty, that's for sure. Cruelty isn't that hard to understand. I had no trouble comprehending why the phone company wanted to screw me over; they just wanted to steal some money, it was nothing personal. That's the way of the world. It made me mad, but it didn't make me feel stupid. If anything, it flattered my intelligence. Accepting all that kindness, though, made me feel stupid.

Human benevolence is totally unfair. We don't live in a kind or generous world, yet we are kind and generous. We know the universe is out to burn us, and it gets us all the way it got Renee, but we don't burn each other, not always. We are kind people in an unkind world, to paraphrase Wallace Stevens. How do you pretend you don't know about it, after you see it? How do you go back to acting like you don't need it? How do you even the score and walk off a free man? You can't. I found myself forced to let go of all sorts of independence I thought I had, independence I had spent years trying to cultivate. That world was all gone, and now I was a supplicant, dependent on the mercy of other people's psychic hearts."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"I realize that I will never fully understand the millions of bizarre ways that music brings people together."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"One of Renee's friends asked her, "Does your boyfriend wear glasses?" She said, "No, he wears a Walkman.""
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

""The Word 'Repulse': I hate this word. I believe 'repel' is a perfectly good word, and 'repulsion' is the noun, as well as the title of an excellent Dinosaur Jr. song. A compulsion compels you; an impulse impels you. Nobody ever says 'compulse' or 'impulse' as a verb. So why would you ever say 'repulse'? This word haunts me in my sleep, like a silver dagger dancing before my eyes. Renee looked it up and I was wrong. But I still kind of think I'm right." "
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

""Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. Whatever 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 (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"Roller Boogie is a relic from - when else? - the '70s. This is a tape I made for the eight-grade dance. The tape still plays, even if the cogs are a little creaky and the sound quality is dismal. It's a ninety-minute TDK Compact Cassette, and like everything else made in the '70s, it's beige. It takes me back to the fall of 1979, when I was a shy, spastic, corduroy-clad Catholic kid from the suburbs of Boston, grief-stricken over the '78 Red Sox. The words "douche" and "bag" have never coupled as passionately as they did in the person of my thirteen-yer-old self. My body, my brain, my elbows that stuck out like switchblades, my feet that got tangled in my bike spokes, but most of all my soul - these formed the waterbed where douchitude and bagness made love sweet love with all the feral intensity of Burt Reynolds and Rachel Ward in Sharkey's Machine."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"For two weeks, I lay awake at night and said Hail Marys over and over to stop my heart from beating too fast. I suddenly realized how much being a husband was about fear: fear of not being able to keep somebody safe, of not being able to protect somebody from all the bad stuff you want to protect them from. Knowing they have more tears in them than you will be able to keep them from crying. I realized that Renee had seen me fail, and that she was the person I was going to be failing in front for the rest of my life. It was just a little failure, but it promised bigger failures to come. Additional ones, anyway. But that's who your wife is, the person you fail in front of. Love it so confusing; there's no peace of mind."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"I didn't know what I was. I didn't have a noun."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"on the 11th of every month my friend elizabeth would say, "well we made it through another month. so do we get her back now?" we always giggled, but we really did expect to get her back. its not human to let go of love, even when it's dead.

we expected one of these monthly anniversaries to be the Final Goodbye. we figured that we'd said all our goodbyes, and given up all the tears we had to give. we'd passed the test and would get back what we'd lost. but instead, every anniversary hurt more, and every anniversary felt like she was further away from coming back. the idea that there wouldn't be a final goodbye- that was a hard goodbye in itself and, at that point, still an impossible goodbye. no private eye has to tell you it's a long goodbye.

...the loss just doesn't go away- it gets bigger the longer you look at it."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"Renée and I met at a bar called the Eastern Standard in Charlottesville, Virginia. I had just moved there to study English in grad school. Renée was a fiction writer in the MFA program. I was sitting with my poet friend Chris in a table in the back, when I fell under the spell of Renée’s bourbon-baked voice. The bartender put on Big Star’s Radio City. Renée was the only other person in the room who perked up. We started talking about how much we loved Big Star. It turned out we had the same favorite Big Star song – the acoustic ballad Thirteen. She’d never heard their third album, Sister Lovers. So naturally, I told her the same thing I’d told every other woman I’d ever fallen for: “I’ll make you a tape!""
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"If the girls keep dancing, everybody's happy. If the girls don't dance, nobody's happy."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"I kept thinking of an old Robert Mitchum cowboy movie where he goes back to see the farmhouse where he was born and finds the house falling apart and an old man living in it by himself. "Lonely place," Robert Mitchum says. The old man says, "Nothing wrong with a lonely place as long as it's private. That's why I never married. Marriage is lonely, but it ain't private." That was always my most intense fear about getting married: When everything sucked and I was by myself, I thought, Well, at least I don't have another miserable person to worry about. I figured if you gave up your private place and it still turns out to be lonely, you're just screwed. "
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"At work she became instant best friends with the Clinique girl, Susan, a Waynesboro muscle-car aficionado. She was fond of dispensinf wisdom along the lines or: "The bullshit stops when the green light pops!" I'd go to the mall to pick up Renee. take them both a couple of coffees, and hang out while they chattered in their hot white coats. Susan would take Renee to hot-rod shows and run-what-ya-brung drag races. She brought out sides of Renee I'd never gotten to see before, and it was a sight to behold. After a night out with Susan, Renee would always come back saying things like, "If it's got tits or tires, it's going to cost you money.""
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"The hungry feeling and the lonely feeling merged until it was hard to tell them apart."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"Getting a Dog: She won this one easily, as I've already mentioned; I thought my graceful surrender would win me a concession or two down the line. i was wrong. Renee saw the dog not as a personal victory for her, but a huge favor she was doing me by teaching me the joys of being pissed on by an animal. This is just one of the adorable quirks of the dog, best friend God ever gave humanity in this crazy little world."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"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 (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"It was just a temporary technological mutation designed to do the same thing music always does, which is allow emotionally warped people to communicate by bombarding each other with pitiful cultural artifacts that in a saner world would be forgotten before they even happened."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"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 (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)