“I do find mouths fascinating and kind of repulsive. They’re sort of like a … gaping wound in people! They can be really horrible. It’s such [an] intimate part of your body and yet it’s a multi-purpose opening, used for shovelling food and pouring drink into. I find myself sometimes with people I don’t know just staring into their mouths….”

—interview with Robert Smith in The Quietus, May 1989

“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. Living, it’s awful for me. I can’t on one hand argue the futility of life and the pointlessness of existence and have a family. It doesn’t sit comfortably.

“I enjoy myself hugely,” he says, with a laugh, “but you know, it’s despite myself, really.”

—interview with Robert Smith in The Guardian, September 2011