Robert Christgau

“I don't have any thoughts on blogs, because I don't read them. I don't read them not out of any principle, but because there are only 24 hours in a day, and I like to read books.”

“I love collections. I got into journalism with the idea that I'd be doing them.”

“One of the things that's happened in the music I love over the past five, 10 years is that some people have gotten very old and continued to make music.”

“Rock & roll fan that I am, Thelonious Monk is probably my favorite musical artist.”

“I like to say that I don't have the slightest doubt that Barack Obama read me in the early 80s. It's the kind of person he was!”

“The idea is every time I go to a show, that night or the next morning I write it down in the gig log. Sometimes they're very scant, sometimes they're very long.”

“Because I've always been good at knowing what I thought and not reviewing prematurely and have gotten better at those things over the years, my flips are rarely that significant.”

“But I don't write a full capsule review of anything I haven't heard five times. It's usually closer to ten.”

“I think Theodore Adorno was profoundly ignorant. I think even Adorno's fans think he was bad at understanding popular music. He thought it was all jazz.”

“I don't know any celebrities. I know a lot of people that most people have never heard of.”

“I believe an editor's job is to help a writer sound like himself or herself.”