The best thing about writing by fans is that it really matters to them: nobody wants to read a measured assessment of life on the road with the Rolling Stones. Fans must be capable of hating people who don't agree with them - they have to have the mentality of a teenager, in other words, as well as the acquisitive beakiness of the train-spotter. But despite occasional enjoyment of one another's company, fans never really get on, and that's because it's in the fan's essential make-up to imagine that they are The Only One.
- "Cartwheels over Broken Glass", Reviews of two books on Morrissey, London Review of Books, March 3, 2004