"On Christmas of 1994, I was fifteen and had just come out to my family. I was also an aspiring writer who adored Virginia Woolf. I put Chloe Plus Olivia on my Christmas list, not expecting anyone to actually seek out an anthology of lesbian literature and buy it for me. But my dad did: he made a special trip to the University Bookstore in Seattle; he wrapped it and put it under the tree for me. I devoured the book, took it to college with me years later, then moved into my first apartment with it when I was twenty. It’s long gone now (lost in another move), but I still remember it fondly as a formative literary text, and as a sign that my dad loved and supported me without hesitation."

"Before I dropped out to start the Pixies, I was in university in Massachusetts. [Future Pixies guitarist] Joey Santiago and I rented a house in the second year. I took the dark windowless room because it had a stereo and I would just sit in the dark and listen to Iggy Pop and XTC records for hours and hours. The one I listened to the most, though, was This Year's Model. They had it on cassette tape at the music library in college, which I remember had these horrible hard plastic headphones, like something you might find in the Soviet Union in 1959. Instead of studying I'd go in there and listen to Elvis Costello over and over until my ears hurt and my head couldn't take it anymore."