Robert Smith: "I'm from an age when disposable wasn't necessarily a bad thing"

•Joe Boyd on music book signings, 2007: "I can tell you what the queue looks like. There's a lot of beards. There's a lot of bald pates. There's a lot of gray hair, and every once in a while there's a 20-something woman in the queue, and then you kind of make sure your hair is combed straight. Then she comes up to the head of the queue and says, 'Will you please sign it "To Peter"? It's for my father for his 60th birthday.'"

•Lady Gaga on pop perfection, 2008: " If it isn't flawless, I gotta work myself up to where it is — otherwise I'm just another pop chick with blonde hair."

•Will Oldham on music, 2008: "You can find in music just about any ideal emotional landscape you crave, whether it's angst or rebellion or celebration or union or dissolution. It's all there, and none of it's going to call you back or text you at four o'clock in the morning or blame you for anything you did or didn't do or slap you with a paternity suit."

•Six Organs of Admittance's Ben Chasny on "Ewok Song," 2009: "I know it by heart, and it's the precursor to all these kids with wizard hats. It all comes down to the Ewoks singing around the fire. Akron/Family ain't got nothing on the Ewoks, man."

•Laurent Brancowitz of Phoenix on his old Daft Punk bandmates, 2009: "They decided to go to a lot of rave parties, and I didn't, because I didn't like the nightclub life. I'm a bit of a snob about it — I find it very vulgar."

•Jarvis Cocker on his song "Caucasian Blues," 2009: "I was interested in how blues music has gone from the music of protest, of the oppressed, to the blandest, safest music for white people to listen to in bars."

Oh, but that was then — and I loathe nostalgia, if that isn't already clear from the past seven years of cranky natterings and screams at the sky against boring, snorey Sha Na Na-style regurgitations. And this is now. Look for more from me in these and other pages, but never look back in regret.