Matthew Healy quotes:

One of my favorite quotes ever was from Slash from Guns and Roses and he said 'to be truly iconic, you need to be able to recognized in a silhouette'

Growing up, I was obsessed with Michael Jackson. I saw him at Wembley when I was 7 years old, it was my first proper show. He was like a god to me.

Along with John Hughes, he's probably the biggest influence. Would be awesome not only to meet him; he's one person I'd also definitely like to work with.

I need to keep my dancing on the right side of weird, otherwise it might get a bit like "American Idol."

I think early on I was really into ambient music and like American original Emo.

I'm used to writing short stories, which is primarily what I like to read.

A band that we supported called Blackfish in Manchester, played the most insane gig I've ever been to. Everything was set on fire, and then they came on and played one of the coolest gigs I've ever seen.

As I tell my intro creative writing students, after reading someone you love, wait at least an hour before starting to write.

I love the necessary ambiguity of short stories - there simply isn't time to render every detail, so much of the story that orbits the literal prose must happen in the reader's imagination. Who knows, maybe the dwindling attention spans means a lucrative future for short story writers.

I think that the internet is a beast of burden.

I think what I listen to now is what I listened to as a kid which is kind of black American soul. I love soul music.

I'd kill myself without music. Immediately. Life is pointless without music for me.

I'm just tired; I just want the world to be quiet for a bit.

I'm not reading any novels right now, though not for lack of trying. Unless they're really good, my attention in most novels tends to sputter out after a hundred pages or so - an awful admission for someone who is trying to write one, but it's true.

At the moment we're playing more stuff from our upcoming album which is really a departure from any record we've done.

Everything that we've ever done has led up to this moment, so I presume there's a certain intricacy in that.

Everything's immediately diminished. That's why there's no real rock stars anymore. People are too accessible.

I don't believe in anything blindly supernatural.

I don't know whether we'll have another Michael Jackson or Elvis, because the world's too quick to level the playing field in that regard. For example, if Michael Jackson did the moonwalk for the first time now, and it debuted on Twitter, the third comment would probably be: "He's just walking backwards."

I like the idea of characters without shame, who hold nothing back.

I think about dying but I don't want to die. Not even close. In fact my problem is the complete opposite. I want to live, I want to escape. I feel trapped and bored and claustrophobic. There's so much to see and so much to do but I somehow still find myself doing nothing at all. I'm still here in this metaphorical bubble of existence and I can't quite figure out what the hell I'm doing or how to get out of it.

I think everything in life is an evolution, isn't it?

I think I couldn't give myself any advice apart from just do exactly what I want.

I think one of the dangers of humor is becoming seduced by it and sacrificing the story for a few laughs.

I think the less individuality you portray... not individuality but like the more solidarity you have the better.

I've always tried to find God in lots of different things, whether that's been drugs, women, etc, etc"¦ But all those things are tangible and they exist and you can see them and you can feel them. Music doesn't exist, physically. Yet is commands ever facet of my personality and it has the power to command people how to feel on a physical level, uncontrollably. And I find that so fascinating.

I'm writing songs that connect to millions of people. And that happens for a reason. I don't really worry too much about people who aren't into it because that's the beauty of music. It's subjective. If every single person in the world loved our music, then that'd be weird.

Its quite there sonically; a strong representation of what the songs on our records are like. It's very loud and our set is based around containing as much energy and dynamics as possible.

Life's too short to drink crappy coffee and cry over boys who don't care.

Music drives me insane, the incessant presence of music in my life. It informs how I see the world; it drives me crazy

Never take a person away from the music they love.

People think that atheists have nothing to live for, but that's not true - it's that we have nothing to die for.

So many characters are governed by the consequences of their actions, and I wanted to have a character who is the exact opposite.

The idea of being part of this tapestry of humanity is a far more enlightening idea for me than believing you are going to this different place when you die. The magic of reality is far more potent.

The main reason we understand what we're doing is because we're the individuals doing it. One of the things that surprises me is that all the songs are about me, and it's cool that people care.

There's a lot of particularly good things going on in my life at the moment. It's the fact that I get to be an ambassador for the concept of modernity. I can be creative and useful. And I don't have to grow up.

There's a lot that's happened in my life that maybe I didn't want to happen, but I suppose it's led me to exactly where I am now.

There's a point when you're dating someone where you become aware of all the things you kind of thought you couldn't depart from. You kind of build all of these nostalgias and sort of antiquated memories in your mind, and when you're at the point during the breakup, you realise, "you know what, it actually takes a bit more than all this bullshit".

There's no coherent stylistic genre specific advice that I could provide.

We had this realisation that we'd sort of travelled from my bedroom to America and all these people are watching us and that was awesome. 11 shows in 5 days I mean if we weren't going out, we were on stage, it was huge.

We like to juxtapose our music with a more dour aesthetic.

We now live in a world where accessibility is paramount. So I think we just juxtapose that a little bit and maybe play the internet like a game because we don't like to be exposed as individuals, we like to be an entity.

We've finished our debut album which has 14 tracks. We're very proud of the release and can't wait for people to hear it.

What works for eating and swimming might work for reading and writing.

When I was young I was one of those kids that got pulled onstage at a Green Day concert. That was pretty awesome.

When you start becoming a pop star, you think, Hold on a second, maybe my life is different now - maybe all these people that I thought of as celebrities are going to be normal, and when I walk into a room I'm going to be really cool and so is everyone else. But that's not what happens at all - I was awkward, and then I just retreated from any social engagement for about a year.

We try to make the sound hold as much relevance as it does on the record you know, we don't try and interpret it in a different way.