Robert Smith

“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 t...”

“I still frequent my parents' house. I go there to escape, back to the bedroom that I grew up in. Just to sit there and feel small.”

“It's really easy to slide into a depression fueled by the pointlessness of existence.”

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

“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 t...”

“It's only people that aren't goths that think the Cure are a goth band.”

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

“The very first concert I ever went to on my own was actually Rory Gallagher. In a one-month period in 1973 or '74, I saw him, Thin Lizzy and the Rolling Stones. I wasn't really a big Rory Ga...”

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

“People think it's funny that I enjoy dreaming so much. I just use it as a form of entertainment. It's very private. I don't see my dreams as separate. I mean, half the time I'm wandering aro...”

“I've never regretted not having children. My mindset in that regard has been constant. I objected to being born, and I refuse to impose life on someone else.”

“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.”

“In some cases, I quite like irritating people who need to be irritated.”

“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 p...”

“I write with a pen and paper. Never on a laptop.”

“You put on eyeliner, and people start screaming at you. How strange, and how marvellous.”

“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...”

“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.”

“There were only two times in my life when I've actually felt down about things and gotten myself into a full mental mess. One of the times was in 1982. I had a horrible time for a few months...”

“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.”