Robert Smith

You can't allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don't consider what you do to have any value at all, and that's nonsense.

I don't care where the Cure is placed in the pantheon of rock. I don't care if we're perceived as relevant. We're never worried how we fit in. I don't even want to fit in.

Irony is the recourse of the weak-minded wimp, I think. I hate bands that deliver their songs with knowing smiles on their faces, so that if those songs fall flat they can say 'Ah well, we never really meant it anyway.' It's so dishonest.

You can't drink on an eight hour flight, pass out, and then go onstage... well you can, but then you're Spandau Ballet.

Like I can't cry for myself so I will let this song take all of the things inside I can't let anyone else see and offer it up, as if the sound were some kind of god, and my pain is some kind of sacrifice.

I would be more familiar with Janet Jackson than I was with the Teardrop Explodes or Joy Division, because I didn't want to listen to my competitors for fear of nicking ideas off them.

It has always seemed slightly uncomfortable, the idea of politicised musicians. Very few of them are clever enough to do it; if they're good at the political side, the music side suffers, and vice versa.

Apart from the fact that I've got a strange job, I do lead a fairly normal life. I do my own shopping. I don't feel constrained by who I am because of what I do; I often feel disappointed by my lack of ability. I get frustrated at myself, but I think everyone does.

I've got a Facebook page, but I've never put anything on it. I've got a presence on all the social networks, in fact, but I've never once sent a message. I'm there because, otherwise, someone's going to pretend to be me.

I've got a presence on all the social networks, in fact, but I've never once sent a message. I'm there because otherwise, someone's going to pretend to be me.

Without faith that there's a world beyond the one we live in, I don't see how it's possible to get rid of angst.

I think, at heart, unless you discover faith in something else, something other, it's very hard to shake the thing that you're adrift alone.