Robert Smith Quotes

The further I get from the things that I care about, the less I care about how much further away I get.

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

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.

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

You don't really know a song until you play it live.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Cardinal rule for all hitters with two strikes on them: Never trust the umpire.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Living, it's awful for me.

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

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.

It's a perfect day for letting go.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

True repentance has a double aspect. It looks upon things past with a weeping eye, and upon the future with a watchful eye.

There may be said to be three sorts of lawyers, able, unable, and lamentable.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Each time I play a song it seems more real.

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.

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

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.

See the ridiculous in everything.

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.

In all relationships, there are always aching holes and that's where the impossible wishes come into it.

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.