I think every day how incredibly lucky it is that I travel around the world playing to thousands of people.
By the time I was leaving school, there were no factories. There was no industry.
You can't escape from yourself, can you?
I'm not interested in the past or in talking about myself.
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.
I think New Order have got their own sound. But what we like to do is experiment, using dance music and other things.
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.
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.
We played at a festival in Mexico City, at the same time as another famous artist, and I reckon we had 55,000 people watching New Order; the other had 7,000. I think from that I've discovered the secret of success in the music industry: don't do any promotion.
I believe that every business and company takes two years to establish.
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.
If someone throws you in a pool and you can't swim, you're going to struggle.
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 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.
I like a challenge. I like learning new skills because I didn't learn much at school.
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 tend to think in images and feelings rather than non-abstract concepts.
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 never met Morrissey.
With guitar, bass and drums, you've got limited horizons.
One of the things I like about music is it's an abstract art, totally abstract, where you can convey an emotion, which I find amazing.
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.
Los Angeles produced the Beach Boys. Dusseldorf produced Kraftwerk. New York produced Chic. Manchester produced Joy Division.
I saw the Sex Pistols, and they were terrible.
The drummer is the backbone of the band and is the real underrated one.
When Joy Division started, I was scared to death of having to get a normal day job.
New Order has always been a hybrid band. We always mixed guitar, bass, drums with electronic.
I'm sure every time I bring something out that isn't New Order, people say it sounds like New Order.
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.
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.
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.
Landscape affects you.
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.
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.
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.
It's impossible to capture every single facet of someone's personality in a film.
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.
You spend more time with your fellow band members than your girlfriend or wife, and you end up at each other's throats. It happens to all bands.
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.
I think that if you're on the same team, you should be pushing in the same direction.
Thatcher was wrong. People don't exist - well, they don't flourish - as individuals. Life's about swapping ideas and communicating with other people.
As you get older, you kind of take a more sober view of life.
Part of the reason I joined Joy Division was so that I really wouldn't have to grow up.
I see all the musicians in Blur with equal standing, really.
The story of New Order is all about learning from our mistakes.
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.
If you go out and just play the old stuff and never write new stuff, you're not really a complete musician, you're a performer.
I was no good at anything else at school. But I was good at one thing, which was creativity.
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.
