Alec

“Maybe you look in the mirror first thing in the morning or when you're in the bathroom at a gas station, or maybe you're on a first date or at a business meeting that's going poorly, and you sort of squint at your reflection and turn your head back and forth, appraising, trying to look at yourself from some remove, as gauzy and filtered as possible, but you can't stand it, can't do it, don't have it in you to really see yourself, let alone to see the person the rest of the world sees when they look at you. At some point you maybe learn to recognize you're not that guy the world sees, that you're something less, or something more, or just something else. And maybe life is learning to make your peace with that.”
― Brad Zellar, Till the Wheels Fall Off

“I'd sit beside him at the white table, and together we would stare into the photographs of Walker Evans, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, and Diane Arbus. "This is all America," Greenland would say, whispering excitedly in a rare display of respect for decorum. "We need a car, Corn Dog. We have to go out there and see some of this stuff and some of these people. This is where all your music comes from.”
― Brad Zellar, Till the Wheels Fall Off

“I started to associate my favorite albums and songs with particular photographers and images. In a weird way, spending so much time looking through those books- usually while listening to music on my Walkman- expanded my imagination in a way all the books I read growing up never did. I could study the people and places in the pictures and feel as if I'd been someplace else. Those books were also an education in looking, in how to really see the world around me. It seems obvious now, but I think I went through life looking straight ahead and trying to pay attention to what the world wanted me to pay attention to, and I noticed that most of the photos that really fascinated me were of things in the margins or peripheries, things you had to actually look around to see.”
― Brad Zellar, Till the Wheels Fall Off

“There are, of course, a million tiny and ridiculous ways a person can get sidetracked and carried away off the main trail. But in the end, always, you become a hostage to who you are, to what you want or what you can't say, to what fascinates you, what breaks you down and holds you under; the sense (or nonsense) you feel compelled to build, the truth or meaning you try so desperately to find.”
― Brad Zellar, Till the Wheels Fall Off