"I learned so much from KRS-One and Public Enemy, more than I did in schools. About African culture. Just learning, metaphysics, different things from hip hop records back in those days. You couldn’t be a dumb rapper, it was about being smart back in those days."

"Haldeman drew on his Vietnam service to tell a story about soldiers who return to Earth after every deployment to find decades then centuries have passed. As a result, culture, sexual mores and even language change, leaving the veterans adrift. By turns melancholy, brilliant and visionary."

"I saw Culture live. Dub reggae was one of the main things I would listen to, so seeing them live was great! We may have been on the bill with them or something, I can't remember. I think we might have done a big Rock Against Racism gig in Finsbury Park at the Rainbow. And Culture played at that. There was a band called… I know The Jam came and did a few numbers before Gang Of Four. It's all a vague. I think we took the rhythmic nature of the lyrics and the way they fitted around the music was very key, very influential."

"Herr, who recently passed away, was one of the great prose stylists of the twentieth-century. Reading Herr is immensely instructive and hopeful; he always makes me feel that, yes, the English language can be used to interrogate any dilemma, no matter how complex. Herr’s rich, high-culture/pop-culture language and his stunning level of erudition allow him to put all doubts and counterarguments into play and create a sturdy mosaic of ambiguity, with an affectionate but skeptical mind at the center of it. I wish he was still with us and writing about this moment – there’s no one I would trust more."