Robert Smith Quotes

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

— Robert Smith

“Why don't we all just get really baked on weed?”

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert 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.”

— Robert Smith

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.'

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert 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.”

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

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.

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert 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.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

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.

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

“The idea of reinvention has always seemed bizarre to me.”

— Robert 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.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

I'm not really obsessed with death.

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

“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.'”

— Robert 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.”

— Robert Smith

“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.”

— Robert Smith

“If I book a hotel it's actually very funny. It's very nice to be a genuine Mr Smith.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith

“I entirely approve the measures proposed by you in relation to the Marines who are lately captives in Tripoli. Therefore execute them.”

— Robert Smith

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

— Robert Smith