Bernard Sumner

“The guitarist always looks a bit clever because he's got so many strings and apparently knows what to do with them.”

“If it wasn't for John Peel, there would be no Joy Division and no New Order. He was one of the few people to give bands that played alternative music a chance to get heard, and he continued to be a champion of cutting-edge music throughout his life.”

“I'm terrible with decisions. And I can't make myself do something I don't like. I can't knuckle under.”

“If you have a bereavement in your family, it's a terrible, terrible thing. But, you know, time passes. It's part of the cycle. It doesn't hurt so much.”

“There were certain things I couldn't do with New Order without upsetting the rest of the band, so I started to write some solo stuff.”

“You can't escape from yourself, can you?”

“There's parts of touring I like. I like the actual performance part, but the bit when you're in the airport waiting at the carousel for your bags to come around, I don't like that a bit.”

“We're all private people, but as a musician, I think that once you get to the point where there's more of your life behind you than in front of you, you owe it to your public to explain yourself.”

“I think if you take 'Get Ready,' 'Waiting For The Siren's Call,' 'Lost Sirens' - those three New Order albums were mostly guitar-based. There were a couple of dance tunes in there, but they were mainly guitar-oriented. They came about through jamming, a lot of them.”

“One of the things I like about music is it's an abstract art, totally abstract, where you can convey an emotion, which I find amazing.”

“Joy Division sounded like Manchester: cold, sparse and, at times, bleak.”

“I entered music at a poppy level.”

“I like singing now, but I didn't at the start. I didn't think about singing, didn't know how to do it, so I hit the ground stumbling.”

“You can't put rubbish into a computer and get something good out.”

“It's weird: people used to want your autograph; now what they want to do is to take your photograph with an iPhone. And sometimes they'll pop their arm around you to hold their iPhone; they're shaking when they take it.”

“I felt that by the late '90s, I'd gone as far as I could with the keyboard.”

“As you get older, you kind of take a more sober view of life.”

“If you hear a New Order track that's mostly electronic, it's generally come about through one person sitting at a computer and programming it.”

“Part of the reason I joined Joy Division was so that I really wouldn't have to grow up.”

“People come up to me and say, 'You changed my life.' I don't think I changed anyone's life. I think their life changed while they were listening to the music.”