“Nothing else ever in your life will affect you like music did in your early teens, and it puts you on a certain course. It’s like a love affair. It widens your taste and it broadens your view on everything. It saves you.”

• Morrissey

“I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that - I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”

• Hugh Mackay

“Perhaps we don’t like what we see: our hips, our loss of hair, our shoe size, our dimples, our knuckles too big, our eating habits, our disposition. We have disclosed these things in secret, likes and dislikes, behind doors with locks, our lonely rooms, our messy desks, our empty hearts, our sudden bursts of energy, our sudden bouts of depression. Don’t worry. Put away your mirrors and your beauty magazines and your books on tape. There is someone right here who knows you more than you do, who is making room on the couch, who is fixing a meal, who is putting on your favorite record, who is listening intently to what you have to say, who is standing there with you, face to face, hand to hand, eye to eye, mouth to mouth. There is no space left uncovered. This is where you belong.”

• Sufjan Stevens

“Well, I definitely struggle with solitude a lot. I have this pattern of going ahead with this plan that doesn’t really… the last thing I consider is other human beings and people living in a society and a community. But I’ve always kind of struggled with it. And that’s what “Lull” is kind of about. You can tell yourself it’s cool to be doing all this stuff on your own, but you’re kidding yourself to a degree. It’s this sort of internal conversation about all that stuff. Someone trying to convince himself that it’s cool and romantic to be off by himself.”

• Andrew Bird

"I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house... love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp."

• David Byrne, Stop Making Sense