A biography for Robert Smithhasn’t been written yet.
“I'm not a morose person; it's just that my best songs reflect on the sadder aspects of life.”
“If you feel alienated from people around you, it's because no one tries to understand you.”
“Perhaps not as badly applied and not as obvious, but for thousands of years, people have worn makeup on stage.”
“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 and felt pretty desperate. Then again in 1984, for various reasons, not all of them within my control. Since then, I just wander in and out of black moods.”
“The idea of reinvention has always seemed bizarre to me.”
“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.”
“I despise people who revel in the ignorance of not being able to play their instrument.”
“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.”
“It has always seemed slightly uncomfortable, the idea of politicised musicians. Very few of them are clever enough to do it; if they're good at the political side, the music side suffers, and vice versa.”
“Refusing to grow up is like refusing to accept your limitations. That's why I don't think we'll ever grow up.”
“I lose myself in music because I can't be bothered explaining what I feel to anyone else around me.”
“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.”
“Like I can't cry for myself so I will let this song take all of the things inside I can't let anyone else see and offer it up, as if the sound were some kind of god, and my pain is some kind of sacrifice.”
“You don't really know a song until you play it live.”
“I married somebody who likes the way I look. If I changed my hair every year, and I reinvented myself in time-honoured pop fashion, I think understandably the person I'm married to would grow slightly sick of me.”
“I look thuggish when I shave my head and wear big boots. I walk into a newsagent and people think I'm going to jump the counter.”
“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.”
“I became an adult in an extreme way. I was recently sorting some old photographs and I found another.”
“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.”
“Performing doesn't come that naturally to me, even though I've done it for years.”