"I like to think. This song expresses my view of love, at least gay love, as a thing scrappy and amateurish and cobbled together and undignified, and not at all like a glamorous Douglas Sirk movie. It only lasts a minute, getting more and more desperate as it speeds up and the pitch rises, and then it stops abruptly in the middle of a breath, just as it began."
"I like to think. This song expresses my view of love, at least gay love, as a thing scrappy and amateurish and cobbled together and undignified, and not at all like a glamorous Douglas Sirk movie. It only lasts a minute, getting more and more desperate as it speeds up and the pitch rises, and then it stops abruptly in the middle of a breath, just as it began."
from "Stephin Merritt: My Life in 15 Songs" in Rolling Stone mag http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/stephin-merritt-my-life-in-15-songs-20151030/railroad-boy-20151023