Quotes from Jamie Hince

I saw a picture of a girl using an eyelash curler when I was a kid, and I thought it was some sort of torture device, the eye guillotine.

I panic when we're on tour and feel the world can leave you behind. When we finish touring, I feel like I'm running to catch up and find out what's been happening.

The best part of touring has to be playing shows.

'The Tin Drum' is one of my favourite books of all time - I've probably got 12 or 15 copies with different covers, different translations - but it's also just about my favourite film.

In high school, I listened to The Jam, stuff like that, a lot of English bands, really. And then I got into anarcho-punk bands that nobody had heard of.

After spending so much time in America, I started travelling with 'In Defence of English Cooking' by George Orwell. It's archaic and old-fashioned in its Englishness and reminds me of home.

I feel some allegiance to pushing electric-guitar music into a different realm, somewhere that isn't retrospective. There's a lot of guitar bands that are a tribute to the 1970s or the Nineties. I want to experiment with guitar music more.

I squatted for most of my adult life. I'm not condoning squatting; it was just the only way I could do what I wanted to do. I didn't have, you know, a trust fund or parents that could help out.

A freshly pressed suit is a miracle when you're travelling. When your suitcase has turned all your clothes into creased rags, and you've crossed so many time zones that you can't tell a Monday from a Thursday, putting on a freshly pressed suit for breakfast is like spending a week in a spa.

I don't feel like the album format is sacred anymore, and things have got to change. I don't listen to music in terms of albums anymore. I've got a short attention span.

There are plenty of cities that have given me the time of my life for a week or two - including Sao Paulo, Paris, and New York - but London has an enduring appeal that keeps on unfolding.

I've got no problem being on my own. I like the way my imagination works.

You can't learn something about all women. Sometimes I feel that the older I get, the less of a grip I've got on it.

One of the things I discovered about myself is I'm just really positive.

When I was a kid growing up, I lived in a little rural village called Woolton Hill, and the nearest town was Newbury. No bands played anywhere near us, so as much as I wanted to be on the grid and in the loop, I never was.