“The Velvet Underground didn’t sell many records, but everyone who bought one went out and started a band.”

Annotation

This quote has been modified to get to the conceptual core. The orignal quote in context reads: “My reputation is far bigger than my sales,” he said with a laugh on the phone from his home in Manhattan. “I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band! So I console myself in thinking that some things generate their rewards in second-hand ways.”

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