Ville Valo

“Love is the funeral of hearts.”

“In almost every interview someone asks what does HIM stand for. I can't even remember our latest lie about that. When Hanson was hot, we said it means Hanson Is Murder. The name doesn't have a particular history. His Infernal Majesty was a totally different band. I think HIM derives from some death metal joke.”

“I'm living my dream right now. I get to make music, perform and travel.”

“We're trying to have the band create something beautiful that hopefully one day, 20 years from now, can be picked up by a kid and hopefully have the same effect that Neil Young had on me, or Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath.”

“I love the song 'Into the Night.' It's Roy Orbison meets David Lynch meets Iggy Pop on amphetamines. It has a punk edge that is not HIM, per se. It is super melodic and super '60s, and that is very new to me and it is a sense of achievement to me.”

“Some genres I'm not a huge fan of but there are always exceptions that break the rules. There are always a few people doing it in a way weird enough to grab my attention.”

“I hate it when bands do that; they're so proud of their new album, they have to play all of it and a couple of golden oldies.”

“Falling in love is the best way to kill your heart because then it's not yours anymore. It's laid in a coffin, waiting to be cremated.”

“I love the Ronettes, the 'do-run-run-run' pop stuff. I love the lyrics, having 'blue, blue blue' being repetitive.”

“I love Johnny Cash but I don't love country music that much.”

“I've always been a huge reggae fan.”

“It's the same with visual arts, you have some really cool, wonderful striking images that make you think and then again you have wonderful striking images that just take you away from the existing world for a second. And I like the latter a bit more.”

“I didn't have any role models really. My best friend was a dog. My mum and dad saved a dog from the gutter and that dog was my brother before Jesse was born. Sami was his name and he was my role model.”

“Art is always criticized and always an outsider gets the blame.”

“I'm only 26 - I don't know anything about life yet. Life is like a puzzle and my pieces are spread all over the world.”

“Women are always beautiful.”

“We started playing music from an early age and so we wasn't really aware of that side of it, the weird thing is the more successful you get the more free booze and drugs you get, they should be given to the bands who don't have the money.”

“Hopefully it will be possible to get all our other albums in American shops one day so if people are interested they can hear it but I'm hoping that people are going to be interested in what we are going to do, not just what we've done.”

“Yeah I'm still writing. I've got about 14 tracks now. But we've been on tour so we haven't had time to get back to a rehearsal place.”

“There's always reasons to make mistakes. Because then you do new mistakes next time. So they're beautiful mistakes.”