Smith: "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."

Smith: "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."

Smith: "Living, it's awful for me."

Smith: "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."

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

Smith: "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."

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

Smith: "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."

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

Smith: "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."

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

Smith: "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."

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

Smith: "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."

Smith: "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."

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

Smith: "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."

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

Smith: "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."