You don't really know a song until you play it live.

I hardly ever listen to any of our old stuff now. Once the songs have been recorded and put on to vinyl they become someone else's entertainment, not mine.

You know, the Internets made us more aware of what people think about us.

I'm not going to worry about the Cure slipping down into the second division; it doesn't bother me because I never expected to be in the first division anyway.

They may not like us, but they can't get away from knowing who we are.

There's no hope of me becoming completely relaxed on stage. If I did, I'd sit down and doze off.

Refusing to grow up is like refusing to accept your limitations. That's why I don't think we'll ever grow up.

I could write songs as bad as Wham's if I really felt the urge to, but what's the point?

I've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don't write about it.

I do a job I really, really love and I kind of have fun with. People think you can't be grown up unless you're moaning about your job.

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.

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

Sometimes I'll get to the end of a song, open my eyes and there's all these faces peering at me. It's quite horrifying.

No, come to think of it, I don't think the Cure will end, but I can make up an ending if you want me to.

I don't think of death in a romantic way anymore.

You don't really know a song until you play it live.

But everyone I know reaches a point where they throw out their arms and go beserk for a while; otherwise you never know what your limits are. I was just trying to find mine.

When we started I wasn't the singer. I was the drunk rhythm guitarist who wrote all these weird songs.

If any of our songs ever did make it on the top ten, I'd disband the group immediately.

Nobody notices me. Nobody thinks I'm me. But then I look less like me than most of the people coming to our concerts.

I honestly don't class myself as a songwriter. I've got 'musician' written on my passport. That's even funnier.

I wouldn't want to think people doted on us, hung on every word, or wanted to look like us.

I think the rock'n'roll myth of living on the edge is a pile of crap.

I became an adult in an extreme way. I was recently sorting some old photographs and I found another.

I'd rather spend my time looking at the sky than listening to Whitney Houston.

I never answer if someone knocks on my door and only the band and my manager have my phone number. In any case my phone doesn't ring so I never notice it. I occasionally just walk past and pick it up to see if anyone's there.

Each time I play a song it seems more real.

A lot of journalists give me a hard time about how I look, but I've never met a journalist I'd rather look like.

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.

Both me and my wife's extended family all live within a 50-mile radius. Like me, a lot of them did time in London then started drifting back to the countryside and the sea. Perhaps it's a homing instinct.

Every animal would rather die themselves than lose their offspring. But it's just genes, isn't it? All of our existence is spent worrying about the next generation, but we don't actually seem to get anywhere.

Everything I do has the tinge of the finite, of my own demise. At some point you either accept death or you just keep pushing it back as you get older and older. I've accepted it.

For a period in the '90s, I felt that the Cure was massively undervalued. But there has been a paradigm shift. There's a bunch of newer bands coming up who've grown up listening to the Cure and don't understand that you're not supposed to like us.

Hendrix was the first person I had come across who seemed completely free, and when you're nine or 10, your life is entirely dominated by adults. So he represented this thing that I wanted to be. Hendrix was the first person who made me think it might be good to be a singer and a guitarist - before that I wanted to be a footballer.

I always place myself as the archetypal Cure fan. I'm the wrong age, but I still think that if I like anything particularly, our fans will.

I am very self-conscious a lot of the time.

I despise people who revel in the ignorance of not being able to play their instrument.

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.

I don't find the technology threatening. A lot of people my age, my generation, find it difficult to immerse themselves. But I would never preclude the idea of using any technology if I thought it suited the end result.

I don't want The Cure to fizzle out doing 45-minute shows of greatest hits. That would be awful for our legacy.

I get a much more extreme reaction when I have my hair really short. I look thuggish when I shave my head and wear big boots. I walk into a newsagent and people think I'm going to jump the counter. It's a much more extreme reaction.

I had no desire to be famous; I just wanted to make the greatest music ever made. I didn't want anyone to know who I was.

I have never liked Morrissey, and I still don't. I think it's hilarious, actually, what things I've heard about him, what he's really like, and his public persona is so different. He's such an actor.

I just play Cure music, whatever that is.

I look thuggish when I shave my head and wear big boots. I walk into a newsagent and people think I'm going to jump the counter.

I lose myself in music because I can't be bothered explaining what I feel to anyone else around me.

I never liked Queen. I can honestly say I hated Queen and everything that they did.

I really enjoy what I do, and who I'm with and where I am. Having said that, I'm not really a person of habit, because what I do in my job is travel around the world and play concerts to people, and occasionally do very weird things.

I wore makeup when I was at school, and I wore makeup when glam started. I started wearing it again when punk started. I've always been drawn to wearing it. It's partly ritualistic, partly theatrical and partly just because I think I look better with it on.