Quotes by Gary Numan

I’ve spent a lot of time in the United States and I’m not under any illusions that it’s a crime-free nirvana. I’m well aware it has plenty of problems, though they seem to be associated with particular areas.

I’m very lucky in the sense that I’ve got a voice that’s distinctive. Not good, but distinctive. That’s a very useful thing to have in this business. I’m glad on the one hand that I’ve got it, but I wish it was more powerful. I wish I had a greater range. I wish it was more accurate at times.

I genuinely don’t know how many albums I’m going to sell when the new album comes out, because I honestly don’t know how many fans I’ve actually got at the moment.

I actually have two hats in my office; one says “network,” one says “studio.” Paul Lee over at ABC sent those over to us and I find it very useful.

I just didn’t make music that you could sing with a big grin, still don’t.

I sometimes wonder if I might be a bit of a disappointment to people, because they are expecting all these ’80s hits and what they get is a dark industrial wall of noise.

If you’ve been massive and it’s all slid away, you tend to get written off. It’s quite difficult to overcome that, which is why I’ve got this problem with nostalgia.

Maybe I over-do the ‘not-80s’ thing. It should be a part of my life that I’ve got some sort of pride in, but I’ve got this huge chip on my shoulder about ’80s nostalgia – and it annoys fans sometimes.

I wouldn’t say I’m vain – I’m just in a job where the way you look is important. Well, at least the facelift wasn’t vanity, but the hair was.

I always say it took me 10 minutes to write ‘Cars,’ but if I am honest it could have been even less than that – and it has been a really successful song over the years. It is still massively used, in advertising, in films, and people do cover versions of it a lot.