Yea-Sayers:

"Uh-oh, love comes to town. The debut affair of the year, and no mistake."
- Dylan Jones, i-D, October, 1987

"'Hand in glove/the sun shines out of our behinds...' Boom! The Smiths can't wait... in the very first line of their debut they spell it out, announcing their indestructable self-belief and irresistible intent with an audacity unheard since 'I am an An-ar-chist' howled outta the opening rumble of 'Anarchy...'"
- Danny Kelly, New Musical Express, August 8, 1987

"The pivotal line of 'Hand In Glove' is 'The sun shines out of our behinds.' That, plus a picture sleeve of a male derriere, is a heck of a way to lead off a debut 45. Further, Sounds and the British daily The Sun decided that 'Handsome Devil' is about molesting young boys - a claim not borne out by lines like 'let me put my hand on your mammary gland'. Both sides, though, are punchy numbers of great promise."
- Trouser Press

"The Smiths ride up 'Hand In Glove' to knock me from my own gallows. With a paucity of effects they seem to piece the cool of a Julian Cope/Teardrops sensitivity with a certain vigour that only us young ones can adopt. Morrissey's voice invocations just rise above the fuzz of treble. Truly a new Bunnyman."
- David Dorrell, New Musical Express, June 11, 1983

Nay-Sayers:

"Aha, Dave McCullough's fave rave of the moment. And yes, it's tinny messily produced crap. Oh dear..."
- Unknown Critic

Smiths-Speak:

"The only tragedy for The Smiths has been that 'Hand In Glove' didn't gain the attention it deserved. I won't rest until that song is in the heart of everything. It's been given another lifespan because it's been re-recorded for the L.P. But it should have been a massive hit. It was so URGENT - to me, it was a complete cry in every direction. It really was a landmark. There is every grain of emotion that has to be injected into all the songs and it worked perfectly with 'Hand In Glove'. It was as if these four people had to play that song - it was so essential. Those words had to be sung."
- Morrissey, Jamming, 1984

"The favourite lyric I have written appears in a song called 'Hand In Glove'. The lines which are most precious to me are: 'The good people laugh/Yes we may be hidden by rags/But we have something they'll never have'. Which is how I felt when I couldn't afford to buy clothes and used to dress in rags but I didn't really feel mentally impoverished.
"The inspiration? Just the very idea of people putting enormous importance on what they had and how they dressed and this very materialistic sense of value which is completely redundant. It goes back to the old cliche of what one has inside is really what one is. And that was it really.
"I remember vividly the night I wrote 'Hand In Glove'. It was just over a year ago. I just wanted to use the theme of complete loneliness. It was to be our first record and it was important to me that there'd be something searingly poetic in it, in a lyrical sense, and yet jubilant at the same time. Being searingly poetic and jubilant was, I always thought, quite difficult because they're two extreme emotions and I wanted to blend them together.
"I was in my room, alone, with a cassette with a guitar tune on it and I was surrounded by lots of words, and I just sat there for two hours and threw the whole thing together."
- Morrissey, Star Hits, 1985

"The original 'Hand In Glove' was financed by The Smiths... representative... Joe Moss, and took a day in - where else - Strawberry Studios... one day in Stockport to enliven history. I re-did the vocal a week later, if only to make a point of starting as stroppily as I intended to continue. The next day we took the train to London, to Rough Trade at the old Blenheim Crescent place. We waited for hours to then be told that Geoff (Travis) couldn't see us, so Johnny said, "Who is Geoff Travis?" and someone pointed to a looming figure swarming down a corridor and Johnny raced after him and forced him to listen. Two hours later the record was cut."
- Morrissey, The Catalogue, 1988

"When we did 'Hand In Glove', that was brilliant because it was a fantastic piece of vinyl."
- Johnny Marr, NME, June 24, 1989

"'Hand In Glove' was done for f250, because the other side was 'Handsome Devil,' which was live from the Hacienda, straight off the desk. Off, by the way, what was only the third gig we'd played."
- Joe Moss, Q, January, 1994

"...the message of the song is to forget the cultivation of the brain and to concentrate on the cultivation of the body. 'A boy in the bush...' is addressed to a scholar. 'There's more to life than books you know, but not much more' - that is the essence of the song. So you can just take it and stick it in an article about child-molesting and it will make absolutely perfect sense. But you can do that with anybody. You can do it with Abba."
- Morrissey on "Handsome Devil"
NME, September 24, 1983

"Like Morrissey, I feel that my life was leading up to 'Hand In Glove,' and from then on things began to happen. My life began. That record set the standard. When Johnny played me their first demo tape, I thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard, both musically and lyrically. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and too good to miss, so I leapt at it as quickly as possible."
- Mike Joyce, Record Mirror, September 8, 1984

"I remember Johnny glowing with pride saying 'This is it! Just listen to this.' I was helplessly won over."
- Geoff Travis on being forced to listen to the demo of 'Hand In Glove', The Face, May, 1985

"'Handsome Devil': It took a week or two to get my head round it. I knew I wanted to do it, but it took a while to get used to, with him singing those sort of lyrics."
- Andy Rourke, Select, April 1993