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 still frequent my parents' house. I go there to escape, back to the bedroom that I grew up in. Just to sit there and feel small.

When punk came along, I found my generation's music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, 'cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, 'This is it.'

Nobody notices me. Nobody thinks I'm me. But then I look less like me than most of the people coming to our concerts.

I despise people who revel in the ignorance of not being able to play their instrument.

You can't drink on an eight hour flight, pass out, and then go onstage... well you can, but then you're Spandau Ballet.

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.

When you're on stage, the real world just drops away for that time. It's pretty intense.

I could write songs as bad as Wham's if I really felt the urge to, but what's the point?

I would be more familiar with Janet Jackson than I was with the Teardrop Explodes or Joy Division, because I didn't want to listen to my competitors for fear of nicking ideas off them.

Hendrix was the first person I had come across who seemed completely free, and when you're nine or 10, your life is entirely dominated by adults. So he represented this thing that I wanted to be. Hendrix was the first person who made me think it might be good to be a singer and a guitarist - before that I wanted to be a footballer.

I'm not a morose person; it's just that my best songs reflect on the sadder aspects of life.

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.

I think the rock'n'roll myth of living on the edge is a pile of crap.

You put on eyeliner, and people start screaming at you. How strange, and how marvellous.

You don't always have to sing dark things to be thoughtful.

A lot of journalists give me a hard time about how I look, but I've never met a journalist I'd rather look like.

I always place myself as the archetypal Cure fan. I'm the wrong age, but I still think that if I like anything particularly, our fans will.

I became an adult in an extreme way. I was recently sorting some old photographs and I found another.

I had every intention of 'Bloodflowers' being the last Cure record. I thought it would be fantastic to finish with the best thing we'd ever done, but I wasn't sure we could pull it off.

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.

I wore makeup when I was at school, and I wore makeup when glam started. I started wearing it again when punk started. I've always been drawn to wearing it. It's partly ritualistic, partly theatrical and partly just because I think I look better with it on.

I'd like to record somewhere really different. Rent a really big house and get a mobile in and set up in the dining room. Maybe New England; it'd be nice in September or October.

It's really nice meeting people after a concert. Still, it's very weird to be at the center of a group of 30 people all listening to what you're saying. When that group turns into 300 people, it goes on from weird. Some people revel in it, and I don't.

I'm in the strange position of the world drifting away from me, but you know what? I'm actually quite content with that. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. I don't feel like, 'Oh God, I'm being left behind.'

Everything I do has the tinge of the finite, of my own demise. At some point you either accept death or you just keep pushing it back as you get older and older. I've accepted it.

When we started I wasn't the singer. I was the drunk rhythm guitarist who wrote all these weird songs.

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.

My whole life I've played music for my own personal enjoyment and the idea of it becoming a machine or a business is just horrible.

There's no hope of me becoming completely relaxed on stage. If I did, I'd sit down and doze off.

I am very self-conscious a lot of the time.

I'm happy quite a lot of the time. I've done far more than I ever thought I would have, so I'd be very hard-pressed to walk around miserable.

I do a job I really, really love and I kind of have fun with. People think you can't be grown up unless you're moaning about your job.

Without faith that there's a world beyond the one we live in, I don't see how it's possible to get rid of angst.

I really enjoy what I do, and who I'm with and where I am. Having said that, I'm not really a person of habit, because what I do in my job is travel around the world and play concerts to people, and occasionally do very weird things.

When you're in a young band for the first time, geographically you're in the same place and you tend to go out and socialize. You play more shows, you spend more time together. You're a unit. As you grow older, inevitably you develop a life outside the band. I think it would be tragic if you didn't.

I write with a pen and paper. Never on a laptop.

I never liked Queen. I can honestly say I hated Queen and everything that they did.

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.

But everyone I know reaches a point where they throw out their arms and go beserk for a while; otherwise you never know what your limits are. I was just trying to find mine.

I don't want The Cure to fizzle out doing 45-minute shows of greatest hits. That would be awful for our legacy.

I hardly ever listen to any of our old stuff now. Once the songs have been recorded and put on to vinyl they become someone else's entertainment, not mine.

Whenever I'm home, I haven't got any makeup on. But even in the studio, before I do vocals, I put makeup on.

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.

You know, the Internets made us more aware of what people think about us.

If any of our songs ever did make it on the top ten, I'd disband the group immediately.

People think it's funny that I enjoy dreaming so much. I just use it as a form of entertainment. It's very private. I don't see my dreams as separate. I mean, half the time I'm wandering around dreaming anyway.

No, come to think of it, I don't think the Cure will end, but I can make up an ending if you want me to.