When you're in a young band for the first time, geographically you're in the same place and you tend to go out and socialize. You play more shows, you spend more time together. You're a unit. As you grow older, inevitably you develop a life outside the band. I think it would be tragic if you didn't.

Robert Smith

Time Life Young

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

Robert Smith

Time Smile Write

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

Robert Smith

Music Use Us

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

Robert Smith

Your You Why

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.

Robert Smith

Life Use Us

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

Robert Smith

Wing Win Who

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

Robert Smith

Who Tin Ted

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

Robert Smith

Think Thin T

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

Robert Smith

Time Whitney Houston Whitney

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

Robert Smith

Men Who T

I've discovered special makeup by a company called M.A.C. You could wear it on the surface of the sun and it wouldn't move.

Robert Smith

You Would Wear

If you feel alienated from people around you, it's because no one tries to understand you.

Robert Smith

You Use Us

I just don't feel comfortable anymore with the kind of attention that I'm getting. It's purely the numbers of people that want a bit of the Cure or want a bit of me.

Robert Smith

Wit Want Us

You can't allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don't consider what you do to have any value at all, and that's nonsense.

Robert Smith

You Wise Value

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.

Robert Smith

Use Us Up

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

Robert Smith

Write Urge T

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

Robert Smith

Art Wrote Who

I would be more familiar with Janet Jackson than I was with the Teardrop Explodes or Joy Division, because I didn't want to listen to my competitors for fear of nicking ideas off them.

Robert Smith

Pet Fear Would

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

Robert Smith

Ten T Slide

I don't dislike my peers because they're still around and remind me of what I'm doing. I never liked them anyway. I never liked U2, the things they've done over the years.

Robert Smith

Years Year Way

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.

Robert Smith

Death You Very

When you're on stage, the real world just drops away for that time. It's pretty intense.

Robert Smith

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

Robert Smith

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

Robert Smith

I'm not a morose person; it's just that my best songs reflect on the sadder aspects of life.

Robert Smith

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

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 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.

Robert Smith

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

Robert Smith

Irony is the recourse of the weak-minded wimp, I think. I hate bands that deliver their songs with knowing smiles on their faces, so that if those songs fall flat they can say 'Ah well, we never really meant it anyway.' It's so dishonest.

Robert Smith

You don't always have to sing dark things to be thoughtful.

Robert Smith

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.

Robert Smith

I had every intention of 'Bloodflowers' being the last Cure record. I thought it would be fantastic to finish with the best thing we'd ever done, but I wasn't sure we could pull it off.

Robert Smith

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.

Robert Smith

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.

Robert Smith

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

Robert Smith

I'd like to record somewhere really different. Rent a really big house and get a mobile in and set up in the dining room. Maybe New England; it'd be nice in September or October.

Robert Smith

When punk came along, I found my generation's music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, 'cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, 'This is it.'

Robert Smith

My whole life I've played music for my own personal enjoyment and the idea of it becoming a machine or a business is just horrible.

Robert Smith

It's really nice meeting people after a concert. Still, it's very weird to be at the center of a group of 30 people all listening to what you're saying. When that group turns into 300 people, it goes on from weird. Some people revel in it, and I don't.

Robert Smith

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

Robert Smith

I'm happy quite a lot of the time. I've done far more than I ever thought I would have, so I'd be very hard-pressed to walk around miserable.

Robert Smith

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.

Robert Smith

Without faith that there's a world beyond the one we live in, I don't see how it's possible to get rid of angst.

Robert Smith

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.

Robert Smith

When you're in a young band for the first time, geographically you're in the same place and you tend to go out and socialize. You play more shows, you spend more time together. You're a unit. As you grow older, inevitably you develop a life outside the band. I think it would be tragic if you didn't.

Robert Smith

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

Robert Smith

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

Robert Smith

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.

Robert Smith

I'm in the strange position of the world drifting away from me, but you know what? I'm actually quite content with that. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. I don't feel like, 'Oh God, I'm being left behind.'

Robert Smith

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.

Robert Smith

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

Robert Smith