When I was a kid growing up, I lived in a little rural village called Woolton Hill, and the nearest town was Newbury. No bands played anywhere near us, so as much as I wanted to be on the grid and in the loop, I never was.
Jamie Hince
After spending so much time in America, I started travelling with 'In Defence of English Cooking' by George Orwell. It's archaic and old-fashioned in its Englishness and reminds me of home.
When I like something, I wear it into the ground, then really regret it.
I love all board games, actually, apart from backgammon. I can never remember the rules.
I've started to fall for New Orleans recently. There's real life there, if you know what I mean.
One of the things I discovered about myself is I'm just really positive.
I've carved a different path which is not that affected by what happens in the bad side of politics. I've always surrounded myself with music and art and love and all those things - pleasures that are sort of immune from all that.
A freshly pressed suit is a miracle when you're travelling. When your suitcase has turned all your clothes into creased rags, and you've crossed so many time zones that you can't tell a Monday from a Thursday, putting on a freshly pressed suit for breakfast is like spending a week in a spa.
I loved all that riot-grrl scene and Nation of Ulysses and Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear. I loved it. It was the moment sort of first growing up where bands had stopped looking like roadies.
Being in a band is not about reality - it's a bit of a fantasy. I can't go on stage as my ordinary self and just play - I've got to become my 'superhuman self.'
In high school, I listened to The Jam, stuff like that, a lot of English bands, really. And then I got into anarcho-punk bands that nobody had heard of.
There are a lot of things about Russian culture, art, music, photography and literature that I'm love with.
'The Tin Drum' is one of my favourite books of all time - I've probably got 12 or 15 copies with different covers, different translations - but it's also just about my favourite film.
I was vegan for about 20 years.
Privacy has become the most precious thing. Things have got more cryptic in my writing.
Did groupies ever interest me? No. I'm a pleasure seeker, and I like going bananas, but that's never appealed to me. I always thought it was a little bit naff.
There are plenty of cities that have given me the time of my life for a week or two - including Sao Paulo, Paris, and New York - but London has an enduring appeal that keeps on unfolding.
I used to take 'Visions of Cody' by Jack Kerouac on tour all the time. I don't really love Kerouac, but that book, you could just open at any page and find something incredible for that day.
The best part of touring has to be playing shows.
Never wear a hat and sunglasses at the same time, because it looks like you're wearing a disguise.
I admire a lot of photographers, but I feel very disconnected from them at the same time. I don't feel I employ any technique like these people in my work. I guess if there's any influence from any of these photographers, it's this: They were concerned only with beauty. Not with 'cool.' I hope I'm doing the same.
I try not to be too realistic. It's better to be over-positive.
I get excited by being in the studio and could never get burnt out in there.
When I see my picture in the papers, I imagine that people think I'm a lot more serious than I am. They probably think I'm pretty miserable.
It's a beautiful thing how happy you can be with a few friends, some beaten up guitars, a fire, and a couple of fields.
I do believe in ghosts, but I haven't seen one. I can imagine that you cross over to the other side, some different dimension or whatever, but how do your clothes get there? Ghosts are always wearing clothes.
I squatted for most of my adult life. I'm not condoning squatting; it was just the only way I could do what I wanted to do. I didn't have, you know, a trust fund or parents that could help out.
It feels like being in a band is a luxury now: like you can only do it if you're signed really early or you come from a wealthy family.
Sometimes not playing music for a day is much more beneficial than playing every day for ten hours.
I feel some allegiance to pushing electric-guitar music into a different realm, somewhere that isn't retrospective. There's a lot of guitar bands that are a tribute to the 1970s or the Nineties. I want to experiment with guitar music more.
I'm a guitar player. I've carved out my own style of guitar music, so I don't look for inspiration with playing guitar.
I love when a song is conceived as a jigsaw puzzle in the studio, and then it's a natural to play live. That's my gauge of success for a song.
I'm probably quite practical when I'm on stage. I start off with a leather jacket, and then get too hot and take it off. I don't think too much about it.
Generally, my life is absolute chaos, but when I'm writing songs, it's very thought out and regimented.
I panic when we're on tour and feel the world can leave you behind. When we finish touring, I feel like I'm running to catch up and find out what's been happening.
I don't feel like the album format is sacred anymore, and things have got to change. I don't listen to music in terms of albums anymore. I've got a short attention span.
I saw a picture of a girl using an eyelash curler when I was a kid, and I thought it was some sort of torture device, the eye guillotine.
Photography is a big part of my life: taking photographs, being around photographers.
I've got no problem being on my own. I like the way my imagination works.
I start the day off with a pot of coffee, and I read all the newspapers online, then I delve around for new music.
Rock music was the death of jazz in a way. I know there's a bunch of people who say jazz isn't dead, but I mean, rock 'n roll, you play three chords to 20,000 people; jazz, you play 20,000 chords to three people.
