Ron Mael

“We're not on a mission to uplift people, but music in general has such a profound effect on people.”

“When I was in France, I'd buy books about the history of the Cannes Film Festival, with all those images of the red carpet with, you know, Brigitte Bardot and Marcello Mastroianni in his tuxedo. To actually be going there with the opening-night film is really surreal.”

“We made demos of those early songs that we recorded in our guitarist's bedroom with just a reel-to-reel tape, and we sent those to at least 20 different record companies at the time thinking, oh the offers are just going to be flowing in. The only person that did respond was Todd Rundgren, and we're forever indebted to him.”

“Even though we try not to be nostalgic about drawing from old music, I'm always inspired by things like old Cole Porter songs or the words in the Gershwin songs or even Stephen Sondheim, where there's a real craft to them but it isn't only that you're hearing the words it's that it links so well with the music.”

“One reason we've been able to do what we do is that we never put our music into any kind of historical perspective.”

“It's always hard to analyze the effect of your nationality and your surroundings or anything like that. I think in some ways we failed to become the textbook British band, but we kind of turned into something else - and it wasn't even intentional.”

“Over 10,000 years of human history, I suppose it's been proven that there is an appeal to the idea of having a family. Just not for me.”

“One tries to be uplifting in one's songs, but occasionally a cloud appears in the sky and one's demeanor leads to songs like 'I'm Toast.' Even the guitars sound depressed.”

“People have told me repeatedly of how scared they were of seeing me on television.”

“What we do is pretty stylised. It hasn't got mass appeal. This, combined with the fact that we've never been over-exposed, seems to have created a certain mystery.”

“It's a secret club, people that have a certain sense of humor, and it doesn't matter whether it's a romantic situation or a creative one.”

“Songs like 'So May We Start' and 'We Love Each Other So Much' aren't song-songs; they're more like rhythmic speaking, not in a rock-music kind of way but as actual dialogue.”

“Even when something's funny, it has to be well-written, too. So we are really aware of the craft part of pop music. We really have a respect for the genre and feel that it's valuable. It's legitimate in its own way and it has as many possibilities as any other kind of music.”

“I don't listen to music to be soothed.”

“The first time we wrote a full-blown movie musical was our adaptation of 'Mai, the Psychic Girl' for Tim Burton, which didn't get made. We learned pretty early on from that experience how to incorporate dialogue into a musical setting that feels naturalistic while still feeling stylized.”

“In a certain way, longevity is its own kind of success. While we would like to be in the position of those bands that are secure in ways that maybe we're not, we kind of feel like we're in a better position. We're bitter for short periods of time, but in the long run, we think we won out.”

“It's important that people realize that, with what we do, we aren't necessarily the ones saying what's being said. It's a character within the song.”

“Every Sparks album is a new album when it's the first one you're hearing.”

“Our knowledge of Swedish culture is kind of limited. Bergman was one Swedish thing that we both knew about and were kind of passionate about.”

“To have a Beatle doing an impression of you, I almost retired at that moment.”