Sometimes I'll get to the end of a song, open my eyes and there's all these faces peering at me. It's quite horrifying.

For a period in the '90s, I felt that the Cure was massively undervalued. But there has been a paradigm shift. There's a bunch of newer bands coming up who've grown up listening to the Cure and don't understand that you're not supposed to like us.

I don't find the technology threatening. A lot of people my age, my generation, find it difficult to immerse themselves. But I would never preclude the idea of using any technology if I thought it suited the end result.

I honestly don't class myself as a songwriter. I've got 'musician' written on my passport. That's even funnier.

I think, at heart, unless you discover faith in something else, something other, it's very hard to shake the thing that you're adrift alone.

The problem as you get older is, from my perspective, after a certain amount of songs, you tend to start writing something and then you stop and say, 'Wait, I think I've written that before.'

I get a much more extreme reaction when I have my hair really short. 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. It's a much more extreme reaction.

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.

I never answer if someone knocks on my door and only the band and my manager have my phone number. In any case my phone doesn't ring so I never notice it. I occasionally just walk past and pick it up to see if anyone's there.

I wouldn't want to think people doted on us, hung on every word, or wanted to look like us.

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 don't think of death in a romantic way anymore.

I'm not going to worry about the Cure slipping down into the second division; it doesn't bother me because I never expected to be in the first division anyway.

Each time I play a song it seems more real.

I had no desire to be famous; I just wanted to make the greatest music ever made. I didn't want anyone to know who I was.

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.

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.

Reading is something I've really missed, not being able to enter people's worlds.

I started out in the 'Cure' reflecting things that I thought were important, and it's reached a point where it takes over and becomes the thing that is important.

I've got a Facebook page, but I've never put anything on it. I've got a presence on all the social networks, in fact, but I've never once sent a message. I'm there because, otherwise, someone's going to pretend to be me.

Every animal would rather die themselves than lose their offspring. But it's just genes, isn't it? All of our existence is spent worrying about the next generation, but we don't actually seem to get anywhere.

My earliest memories are sitting on the beach at Blackpool, and I know that if I went back, it would be horrible. I know what Blackpool's like - it's nothing like I imagined it was as a child.

If I put a value on my music, and no one's prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan; it can't work.

Anyone can rehearse and play constantly any song in the world.

Living, it's awful for me.

I think that if you become a parent, you stop being a child, and your position in relation to your parents changes.

I'm not really obsessed with death.

I just play Cure music, whatever that is.

Performing doesn't come that naturally to me, even though I've done it for years.

Perhaps not as badly applied and not as obvious, but for thousands of years, people have worn makeup on stage.

If you acquiesce to one interview, there's always another waiting in the wings. Also if you're interviewed repeatedly, you just start repeating yourself. I don't like to do that.

Whatever I was doing, even when I was at school, I never repressed anything that I felt. I wasn't flamboyant; I was actually quite reticent most of the time. But if I felt I had to do something, I did it.

The idea of appealing to people of a like mind and like spirit always appealed to me.

The very first concert I ever went to on my own was actually Rory Gallagher. In a one-month period in 1973 or '74, I saw him, Thin Lizzy and the Rolling Stones. I wasn't really a big Rory Gallagher fan, but I thought his guitar playing was fabulous. But Thin Lizzy, they were fabulous.

I don't care where the Cure is placed in the pantheon of rock. I don't care if we're perceived as relevant. We're never worried how we fit in. I don't even want to fit in.

The idea of reinvention has always seemed bizarre to me.

Apart from the fact that I've got a strange job, I do lead a fairly normal life. I do my own shopping. I don't feel constrained by who I am because of what I do; I often feel disappointed by my lack of ability. I get frustrated at myself, but I think everyone does.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.