Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death

Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death. The worse of the punk rock groups, I suppose, currently are the Sex Pistols. They are unbelievably nauseating. They are the antithesis of humankind. I would like somebody to dig a very, very large, exceedingly deep hole and drop the the whole bloody lot down it.

Bernard Brook-Partridge, cited in S. Maconie, The people's songs (2013), 195-6

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Being in ... prog acts was great because you could play in 15/8 time and still stay in good hotels.

Almost half a century on, 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' still resonates with echoes of that golden summer [1967]. In 2009, it was still Britain's most played record on the radio. The runner up was Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. The two songs both contain the unusual word 'fandango' in the lyrics.

It cannot be overstated that despite its difficult time signatures, fantastical sleeves and outlandish concepts and costumes, prog was enormously, insanely popular all over the world. Stadiums full of fans lapped up the difficulty of it all, relished the uncommerciality and thus paradoxically made it far more commercial than much pop of the day. Released in 1973, Rick Wakeman's purely instrumental solo album comprising quasi-classical pieces about long-dead English Tudor queens, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, sold 15 million albums. Bill Bruford captured this nice contradiction brilliantly, when we said that, as a creative musician, being in Yes, King Crimson and other prog acts was great because you could play in 15/8 time and still stay in good hotels.

S. Maconie, The People's songs (2013), 83 and 97-98

People say that a book you can't find doesn't exist

I recall that for a while, even though the situation was so desperate, Brauer spent all his time bringing his card index up to date. He was finding it increasingly hard to find the books he was looking for. People say that a book you can't find doesn't exist. ... Classifying twenty thousand volumes is no easy matter. Not only do you have to have a strict respect for order - an almost superhuman respect, I would say - but you need a method and time to devote to the thankless task of cataloging works whose meaning is very different from the numbers you use to identify them.

C.M. Dominguez, tr. P. Sis, The house of paper (2004), 48-9

It is often much harder to get rid of books than it is to acquire them

It is often much harder to get rid of books than it is to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with them, witness to a moment in our lives we will never see again. While they are still there it is part of us, I have notices that many people make a note of the day, month,, and year that they read a book; they build up a secret calendar. Others, before lending one, write their name on the flyleaf, note whom they lent it to in an address book, and add the date. I have known book owners who stamp them or slip a card between their pages the way they do in public libraries. Nobody wants to mislay a book. We prefer to lose a ring, a watch, an umbrella, rather than a book whose pages we will never read again, but which retains, just in the sound of its title, a remote and perhaps long-lost emotion.

C.M. Dominguez, tr. P. Sis, The house of paper (2004), 14

he had known more policemen by their first names than any other man in the metropolis

There were men in London - bookmakers, skittle sharps, jellied eel sellers on race courses, and men like that - who would not have known whom you were referring to if you had mentioned Einstein, butt they all knew Gally. He had been, till that institution passed beyond the veil, a man at whom the old Pelican Club pointed with pride, and he had known more policemen by their first names than any other man in the metropolis.

P.G. Wodehouse, Sunset at Blandings (1977), 22