I’m very shy and awkward; I can’t have a normal conversation, and then people think I’m being a bit rude, but really I’m not.
Eliot Sumner
It’s always best to challenge yourself and go to a place out of your comfort zone.
Eliot Sumner
Self-sufficiency is vitally important to my self-respect. I never wanted to rely on my parents in that way, because I knew that if I got used to it, I’d be reliant all my life.
Eliot Sumner
In 2009, I fractured my skull in a freak accident at an L.A. restaurant. I suffered a seizure and was rushed into hospital. I was so out of it that I refused to let them scan my brain. My dad rushed to my bedside and talked me into having the CAT scan – he told me that I might die if I didn’t go through with it.
Eliot Sumner
People always have to have a reference – I think I’ll always be in the shadow of my parents.
Eliot Sumner
I sometimes suffer from insomnia, and one of the first times it ever happened, I was like, ‘I don’t know what to do with myself,’ so I started writing a song, and by morning, it was finished. It was about how I couldn’t sleep… I was 14.
Eliot Sumner
I was somewhat of a mute at school, so people were quite scared!
Eliot Sumner
I’m very much a creature of habit. I don’t like to try to new things.
Eliot Sumner
I write most of my stuff when I’m on a train or a plane, any mode of transport. I like trains because you hear this motoric rhythm and the scenery is great. You go into your own little world. You don’t have to be anywhere else.
Eliot Sumner
I’m an extremist. I don’t do things in halves. I don’t moderate anything. That can be with work or with good things as well. But often, I take it a bit too far.
Eliot Sumner
My French is terrible, and my Spanish is even worse. I find Spanish really difficult. They speak so quickly, whereas in German, it’s very clear what they’re saying. It’s easier to repeat.
Eliot Sumner
I try to read, but my attention span is so bad, and ever since Netflix was invented, that’s all I do in my spare time, which is really bad, but it’s like a chore to read for me.
Eliot Sumner
I like to move around. It suits me. I grew up in Wiltshire on a farm, and that’s the only place I call home.
Eliot Sumner
I think I have a lot of energy, and most of it is quite aggressive energy. But in a positive way, I think. It’s like a positive aggression.
Eliot Sumner
I started listening to a lot of Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young when I was 8 or 9 years old – I had siblings that gave me good music instead of the crap that was on the radio in the ’90s.
Eliot Sumner
I only wear black. I think it suits me.
Eliot Sumner
It’s not a nice thing to have a song written about you.
Eliot Sumner
I think, forever, I was trying to figure out maybe… what I am. But I don’t think anyone should feel pressured to have any kind of label or tag on them. We should treat everybody the same… Me, I don’t like to be put down to a specific thing. We’re all human beings.
Eliot Sumner
Music is about self-expression and representing the times, and I think fashion is the same. It took me a long time to find my own style, both in terms of fashion and music.
Eliot Sumner
For me, Paul Simon has always been an incredible songwriter, as he writes very complicated songs that sound very simple, and he makes it look so easy when it’s not.
Eliot Sumner
It’s difficult to explain exactly how I react to music, but if it makes me feel anything at all, then I’ll have some kind of emotional relationship to it. That’s what defines good music to me – if it makes me truly feel something.
Eliot Sumner
On my fourth or fifth birthday, a guitar was given to me, and I made a new friend. A very loud friend.
Eliot Sumner
With a band I feel stronger. It’s not just me and my weird thoughts.
Eliot Sumner
I can only be myself, and if I have to suffer for that, that’s okay, because to pretend to be somebody else – I tried that, it’s terrible.
Eliot Sumner
I didn’t come out as gay; I came out as I don’t really believe in gender.
Eliot Sumner
I wear a lot of black. Like my heart.
Eliot Sumner
Being Sting’s daughter hasn’t kicked any doors open for me – he has had absolutely nothing to do with my career. It’s all been down to me so far, and that’s how I want to keep it.
Eliot Sumner
As a kid, I loved to dress up as Ian Dury and run around hitting people with drumsticks. Members of my family, neighbours, friends, kids at school – no one was safe from my rhythm sticks.
Eliot Sumner
I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to music. I like studio gear. I’m always looking it up on eBay and seeing what I can afford.
Eliot Sumner
It stresses me out writing songs,; I get really super nervous and speedy. I feel like I’m possessed.
Eliot Sumner
With social networks these days, everyone needs to know everything all the time. But the problem is, people are so used to short snippets of information that no one has any attention span anymore. I don’t, anyway.
Eliot Sumner
I think everyone’s got an obstacle in their career that they have to challenge. I think, in a way, that pushes you to prove who you are.
Eliot Sumner
I knew I wasn’t going to write a record as soon as I got signed, because I hadn’t had any life experiences. I was still at school, and I wasn’t going to write about that.
Eliot Sumner
Music is the only thing that I trust.
Eliot Sumner
I make my songs slightly abstract so that people can interpret them their own way. I think that’s a lot more special, so you can hear a song and think, ‘I feel exactly that way,’ even if it wasn’t written for that feeling.
Eliot Sumner
I was very young when I did ‘I Blame Coco,’ and I never really recognized that sound as me.
Eliot Sumner
I picked up the guitar when I was 4, and from then, I could never be bored.
Eliot Sumner
I would make documentaries if it was a worthy cause. I have a lot of respect for people who put themselves in harm’s way to make people see that something needs to be done.
Eliot Sumner
I don’t particularly like attention. I like to do things on my own. I like to dress myself. People always ask that at shoots: ‘Do you want any help?’ That’s the weirdest question.
Eliot Sumner
I don’t look into myself too much. I don’t think I’m shy so much as a better listener than I am a speaker. I just really don’t wish for attention.
Eliot Sumner
I like to write from a slightly sad or complicated place. But with a sense of hope and happiness at the same time.
Eliot Sumner