Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English musician Robert Smith.
Last updated on November 5, 2024.
Robert James Smith is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He is best known as the lead singer, guitarist, primary songwriter, and only continuous member of the rock band the Cure, which he co-founded in 1978. He was also the lead guitarist for the band Siouxsie and the Banshees from 1982 to 1984, and was part of the short-lived group the Glove in 1983.
I wouldn't want to think people doted on us, hung on every word, or wanted to look like us.
I don't think of death in a romantic way anymore.
Living, it's awful for me.
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 became an adult in an extreme way. I was recently sorting some old photographs and I found another.
If you feel alienated from people around you, it's because no one tries to understand you.
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.
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.
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.
If any of our songs ever did make it on the top ten, I'd disband the group immediately.
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.
I despise people who revel in the ignorance of not being able to play their instrument.
I'd rather spend my time looking at the sky than listening to Whitney Houston.
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.
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.
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.
You don't really know a song until you play it live.
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.
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'm not a morose person; it's just that my best songs reflect on the sadder aspects of life.
The idea of reinvention has always seemed bizarre to me.
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.
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.
They may not like us, but they can't get away from knowing who we are.
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.
I lose myself in music because I can't be bothered explaining what I feel to anyone else around me.
I could write songs as bad as Wham's if I really felt the urge to, but what's the point?
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 never liked Queen. I can honestly say I hated Queen and everything that they did.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The idea of appealing to people of a like mind and like spirit always appealed to me.
Reading is something I've really missed, not being able to enter people's worlds.
I think the rock'n'roll myth of living on the edge is a pile of crap.
When we started I wasn't the singer. I was the drunk rhythm guitarist who wrote all these weird songs.
Nobody notices me. Nobody thinks I'm me. But then I look less like me than most of the people coming to our concerts.
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.
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 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 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 really easy to slide into a depression fueled by the pointlessness of existence.
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.
In some cases, I quite like irritating people who need to be irritated.
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.'
Refusing to grow up is like refusing to accept your limitations. That's why I don't think we'll ever grow up.
I honestly don't class myself as a songwriter. I've got 'musician' written on my passport. That's even funnier.
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.
Each time I play a song it seems more real.
You know, the Internets made us more aware of what people think about us.
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.
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 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've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don't write about it.
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'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.
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.
There's no hope of me becoming completely relaxed on stage. If I did, I'd sit down and doze off.