Top 45 Bernard Sumner Quotes

It’s disrespectful to the older generation to have long hair. They fought in two world wars; they didn’t fight for us to grow our hair and look like girls.

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

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

Joy Division sounded like Manchester: cold, sparse and, at times, bleak.

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

I believe that every business and company takes two years to establish.

I always felt like there were always egos involved when I was trying to get music finished in New Order. Sometimes it would feel like I was running through water.

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.

Joy Division finished the 1970s on a high. Our debut album, ‘Unknown Pleasures,’ was doing well; we’d just finished a hugely enjoyable and successful tour. The band’s profile was higher than it had ever been, and it seemed to be growing by the day.

Los Angeles produced the Beach Boys. Dusseldorf produced Kraftwerk. New York produced Chic. Manchester produced Joy Division.

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

The guitarist always looks a bit clever because he’s got so many strings and apparently knows what to do with them.

We didn’t play any Joy Division songs for 10 years after the start of New Order, which was a very honourable thing to do even if it meant shooting ourselves in the foot.

As you get older, you kind of take a more sober view of 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.

I was interested in Prozac from a personal point of view because I can be a bit moody – things do get on top of me sometimes – so I was quite keen to find out what it would do to my personality.

People come up to me and say, ‘You changed my life.’ I don’t think I changed anyone’s life. I think their life changed while they were listening to the music.

I saw the Sex Pistols, and they were terrible.

I’m not interested in how well someone can sing. It’s what you’re singing that interests me.

It’s not in my nature to be too literal.

If I work on music, it’ll be for 10 hours a day, so sometimes I’ll feel stressed, and I’ll go for a two-hour walk. That sorts me out.

It’s impossible to capture every single facet of someone’s personality in a film.

If you choose to take a path in life, don’t blame other people for the path you’ve chosen to take.

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

I entered music at a poppy level.

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.

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.

The drummer is the backbone of the band and is the real underrated one.

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

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.

II’m quite a successful musician, but I’m not sure if it’s my vocation.

In New Order, I played about 95% of the synths. It’s not much fun for the other guys in the band when I’m playing my synth parts.

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

It can be an educational thing to play your songs to people because you see where you’ve gone right and where you’ve gone wrong.

I think if you take ‘Get Ready,’ ‘Waiting For The Siren’s Call,’ ‘Lost Sirens’ – those three New Order albums were mostly guitar-based. There were a couple of dance tunes in there, but they were mainly guitar-oriented. They came about through jamming, a lot of them.

It’s weird: people used to want your autograph; now what they want to do is to take your photograph with an iPhone. And sometimes they’ll pop their arm around you to hold their iPhone; they’re shaking when they take it.

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

If you hear a New Order track that’s mostly electronic, it’s generally come about through one person sitting at a computer and programming it.

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.

I get writer’s block all the time. The only way I can write what I consider to be good lyrics is to put myself through the mill.

New Order has always been a hybrid band. We always mixed guitar, bass, drums with electronic.

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

I think that if you’re on the same team, you should be pushing in the same direction.

I think New Order have got their own sound. But what we like to do is experiment, using dance music and other things.

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