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.
— Bernard Sumner
When you grow up without a brother or sister, you tend to see things just through your own eyes. You have friends and everything, but you spend most of your time watching TV or sat in a room making decisions about your life on your own.
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.
I'm not interested in the past or in talking about myself.
I entered music at a poppy level.
Joy Division sounded like Manchester: cold, sparse and, at times, bleak.
Part of the reason I joined Joy Division was so that I really wouldn't have to grow up.
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.
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.
It's impossible to capture every single facet of someone's personality in a film.
I'm terrible with decisions. And I can't make myself do something I don't like. I can't knuckle under.
With guitar, bass and drums, you've got limited horizons.
We're all private people, but as a musician, I think that once you get to the point where there's more of your life behind you than in front of you, you owe it to your public to explain yourself.
It's not in my nature to be too literal.
There's challenges in life that present themselves unexpectedly, and if you rise to them, then those challenges will toughen you up.
If someone throws you in a pool and you can't swim, you're going to struggle.
I never knew my father. He'd disappeared from the scene before I was born, and I still have no idea who he is. Perhaps strangely, it's never bothered me; I certainly don't believe it's really affected me.
Los Angeles produced the Beach Boys. Dusseldorf produced Kraftwerk. New York produced Chic. Manchester produced Joy Division.
I think when you're in your 20s, going from adolescence to about 24, I think your life is a series of emotional storms that you have to weather. Life is more emotional at that time, and you're less equipped to deal with what life throws at you. I always think that if you can get past 24, than life really starts at that point.
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 in South America people are very, uh, they have no inhibitions and wear their hearts on their sleeves - what's the word? They're very expressive, demonstrative.
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.
I think every day how incredibly lucky it is that I travel around the world playing to thousands of people.
If you choose to take a path in life, don't blame other people for the path you've chosen to take.
Thatcher was wrong. People don't exist - well, they don't flourish - as individuals. Life's about swapping ideas and communicating with other people.
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.
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.
I like singing now, but I didn't at the start. I didn't think about singing, didn't know how to do it, so I hit the ground stumbling.
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've realized that I owe people a look behind the scenes of my own story, because I don't think anyone can have a true understanding of the music without an insight into where it came from.
I knew from working with New Order that I enjoyed working with Phil Cunningham.
There's parts of touring I like. I like the actual performance part, but the bit when you're in the airport waiting at the carousel for your bags to come around, I don't like that a bit.
I felt that by the late '90s, I'd gone as far as I could with the keyboard.
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 like a challenge. I like learning new skills because I didn't learn much at school.
