“[In my favourite of your confessional songs – ‘Half A Person’ – you sing about being hopelessly smitten with a girl who, after you return to impress her as a famous personage, simply tells you, “When you were hopelessly poor I just liked you more”… Is that autobiographical? – Ed] Yes, that is all absolutely true. She does exist.”Morrissey (722)

“No, it wasn’t about Rough Trade at all. So I was a bit confused when Geoff Travis, the Rough Trade big boy, despised it and stamped on it. It was about the music industry in general, about practically anybody who’s died and left behind that frenetic fanatical legacy which sends people scrambling. Billy Fury, Marc Bolan…”Morrissey (720)

“Of all the political topics to be scrutinised people are still disturbingly vague about the treatment of animals. People still seem to believe that meat is a particular substance not at all connected to animals playing in the field over there. People don’t realise how gruesomely and frighteningly the animal gets to the plate…”Morrissey (836)

“It was the frustration that I felt at the age of 20 when I still didn’t feel easy walking around the streets on which I’d been born, where all my family had lived — they’re originally from Ireland but had been here since the Fifties. It was a constant confusion to me why I never really felt ‘This is my patch. This is my home. I know these people. I can do what I like, because this is mine’. It never was. I could never walk easily.”Morrissey (837)