People like Nick Cave - that ridiculous, over-the-top doom, taking it to extremes - I find it uplifting because it's like someone else is feeling what you're feeling and putting it into their music. Someone expressing extreme joy is just as valuable; it's just the fact that they're expressing their soul through music.

Matt Bellamy

In the long term, artificial intelligence and automation are going to be taking over so much of what gives humans a feeling of purpose.

Matt Bellamy

You have to evolve. Stagnation breeds boredom.

Matt Bellamy

Empathy seems to be seen as a weakness. We condition people to withdraw it to succeed. But really, it needs to be re-seen as a strength again if there is to be any kind of hope in the world.

Matt Bellamy

Introverts probably have a higher degree of sensitivity to outside stimulus and tend to back off. In your quiet shyness as a child, you end up with an accumulation of thoughts and ideas, building up big, imaginative worlds. You have to get it all out somehow, so it goes into your work.

Matt Bellamy

When I think about my teenage years, when my parents broke up, and feeling alone and being out of control and having to survive... And then other times when you've had to find your own way... that's always been a dominant theme in what I've done.

Matt Bellamy

As soon as you pick up a guitar, you're up against the legends of rock. The same goes with stadium drum kits and electric bass. Essentially, you're already in a soundscape that's very familiar and has a lot of established legendary material recorded using those instruments.

Matt Bellamy

I used to do a lot of ouija boards, and I asked if there was life after death. Some spirit replied, 'He who seeketh knowledge seeketh sorrow!'

Matt Bellamy

As a rock band, you're slightly one foot in the past, playing instruments like guitar, bass and drums.

Matt Bellamy

I think we have a lot in common with classical composers of the 19th century, although I'm not claiming to have their intelligence. They wanted to create a musical explosion, to blow the crowd away.

Matt Bellamy

I never understood bands who were only influenced by a narrow era of, say, five years of music.

Matt Bellamy

Two hundred years ago, industrialisation ruined the labour force. In the modern age, especially in the West or America, people who are 'efficient,' who can bracket their emotions off, tend to win. But at what cost to the rest of us?

Matt Bellamy

I was going out dancing in clubs around New York, and that helped create 'Supermassive Black Hole.' Franz Ferdinand would have done it very well with that dance-type beat going on mixed with alternative guitar, and I've always wanted to find that.

Matt Bellamy

Rachmaninov has some kind of weird dark edge to his music which I don't think I've heard with any other kind of music before.

Matt Bellamy

I've spent important times of my life in Spain and Greece, and various deep things happened there - falling in love, stuff like that.

Matt Bellamy

I experienced the sharp end of a tough time, living with a single parent, my mum, and she was really struggling to get a job. These are the things that form your views in life. They are established when you are growing up and being raised. That stuff doesn't really go away; that stays with you.

Matt Bellamy

Apple, iTunes, and streaming services have made the single a more easy thing to access. What that's done has made the album as a collection of songs almost meaningless. But an album that has a concept or story or reason to be an album, if anything, has more meaning now than it ever has.

Matt Bellamy

When I dabble in watching the news and reading about current events, I tend to get a future negative view, and that's something I've dealt with through music. It's quite possible I'm slightly paranoid. But I'd say making music is an expression of feelings of helplessness and lack of control that I think a lot of people can relate to.

Matt Bellamy

Money and success haven't really changed my beliefs or opinions over the years. When I was growing up, my mum and dad split when I was 13 or 14, during the early-Nineties recession. At that time, my dad went bankrupt, and it played a huge part in it all at home.

Matt Bellamy

People like Nick Cave - that ridiculous, over-the-top doom, taking it to extremes - I find it uplifting because it's like someone else is feeling what you're feeling and putting it into their music. Someone expressing extreme joy is just as valuable; it's just the fact that they're expressing their soul through music.

Matt Bellamy

I have recurring nightmares about being in a Nazi concentration camp with all my family and constantly being sent to solitary confinement.

Matt Bellamy