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. – Bernard Sumner
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. – Bernard Sumner
If you start off writing an album with a band, the reality is that you’re constantly in each other’s company, so it’s really important that you get on with each other. – Bernard Sumner
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. – Bernard Sumner
Part of the reason I joined Joy Division was so that I really wouldn’t have to grow up. – Bernard Sumner
I think that if you’re on the same team, you should be pushing in the same direction. – Bernard Sumner
Los Angeles produced the Beach Boys. Dusseldorf produced Kraftwerk. New York produced Chic. Manchester produced Joy Division. – Bernard Sumner
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. – Bernard Sumner
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. – Bernard Sumner
I’m terrible with decisions. And I can’t make myself do something I don’t like. I can’t knuckle under. – Bernard Sumner
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. – Bernard Sumner
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. – Bernard Sumner
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. – Bernard Sumner
I’m not interested in how well someone can sing. It’s what you’re singing that interests me. – Bernard Sumner
There were certain things I couldn’t do with New Order without upsetting the rest of the band, so I started to write some solo stuff. – Bernard Sumner
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. – Bernard Sumner
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. – Bernard Sumner
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. – Bernard Sumner
In Salford, we had fish in our tap water. I remember, one hot summer day, running to the toilet at playtime and dunking our heads in a sink full of water. I remember putting my head in and seeing all these little fish in it. – Bernard Sumner