Quotes from Bernard Sumner

I'm terrible with decisions. And I can't make myself do something I don't like. I can't knuckle under.

There's only two choices when life goes wrong. You deal with it, or you check out, and, like 90% of people, I go for the former.

Thatcher was wrong. People don't exist - well, they don't flourish - as individuals. Life's about swapping ideas and communicating with other people.

Where I grew up was a place called Salford, which was the industrial heartland of Manchester. And where I lived in Salford, I could walk to the center of Manchester within about 20 minutes. So I lived really close to the center.

As human beings, we all mature physically from childhood to adolescence and then into adulthood, but our emotions lag behind.

I think every day how incredibly lucky it is that I travel around the world playing to thousands of people.

You spend more time with your fellow band members than your girlfriend or wife, and you end up at each other's throats. It happens to all bands.

If someone throws you in a pool and you can't swim, you're going to struggle.

Choosing a name for a band is always a difficult thing, and I don't think people should read too much into a name because, after all, it's just a handle. It doesn't mean anything.

I used to be a party monster, very into Acid House, which I saw as my weekend reward for working hard all week.

If you have a bereavement in your family, it's a terrible, terrible thing. But, you know, time passes. It's part of the cycle. It doesn't hurt so much.

With guitar, bass and drums, you've got limited horizons.

Playing live is great, but it's not a creative thing, really. It's a reproductive thing.

I tend to think in images and feelings rather than non-abstract concepts.

My mother, Laura Sumner, had cerebral palsy. She was born absolutely fine, but after about three days, she started having convulsions that left her with a condition that would confine her to a wheelchair her entire life.

I first read about hypnotism at school, and I used to do tricks like getting a really skinny guy to arm wrestle the local bully.

If you're a lead singer, then you can't afford to be sensitive. On stage, everyone looks at the lead singer, even if you don't want them to - in America, they have those massive follow spots on you all the time; it does your head in. So, if you are a lead singer and you don't toughen up, you're in the wrong job, and you have to get out.

If you're driving around or at home with the stereo blasting pure dance track, it gets boring within about 15 minutes. It doesn't work at home like it does in a nightclub. You've got no atmosphere.

Being a single mother in the late 1950s was a very shocking thing - and dreadful thing - for people.

I like a challenge. I like learning new skills because I didn't learn much at school.

I'd had to cope with a lot of death and illness in my family from a young age, and that maybe gave me a bleak outlook on the world.

If something I do now sounds like something I did in the past, it's because I played it. I can't help sounding like myself. That's going to happen. The things that I play on guitar that resonate with me are probably the same things that resonated with me when I started playing in Joy Division.

When Joy Division started, I was scared to death of having to get a normal day job.

Part of the reason I joined Joy Division was so that I really wouldn't have to grow up.