Bernard Sumner

I'd had to cope with a lot of death and illness in my family from a young age, and that maybe gave me a bleak outlook on the world. ”

Playing live is great, but it's not a creative thing, really. It's a reproductive thing. ”

I was no good at anything else at school. But I was good at one thing, which was creativity. ”

The words that I'm most happy with are the ones that come from my subconscious rather than my conscious. They just feel right. I think that's the same with music, really. If you're doing an album, there's ten or eleven sets of lyrics, so you get to the point of inspiration ten or eleven times - it's difficult. ”

If I work on music, it'll be for 10 hours a day, so sometimes I'll feel stressed, and I'll go for a two-hour walk. That sorts me out. ”

If you're driving around or at home with the stereo blasting pure dance track, it gets boring within about 15 minutes. It doesn't work at home like it does in a nightclub. You've got no atmosphere. ”

I was interested in Prozac from a personal point of view because I can be a bit moody - things do get on top of me sometimes - so I was quite keen to find out what it would do to my personality. ”