Chrissie Hynde Quotes

I'm all for bootlegging. A record costs $20 ... who can afford that?

One person can make all the difference in the world. For the first time in recorded human history, we have the fate of the whole planet in our hands.

No amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat.

Everybody had to own and maintain a car. It was the biggest con in the Land of the Free. Well, along with the tobacco and alcohol industries, which also pumped out poison and had the nation in their grip. Pharmaceuticals and firearms would join the party in due course.

How much did you get for your soul?

When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There's a conversational thing going on. I suppose it depends on which The Pretenders song you're listening to.

What characterized the whole punk scene for me in 1977 was there was no racism or sexism. It was an anarchy of -isms, and a matter of abolishing it all.

The only person stopping you from doing something is yourself, and looking for excuses all the time just gets in the way of obtaining your own goals. It's like the writer who keeps getting up and straightening the pictures in the room.

Songwriting is like working on a jigsaw puzzle, and it doesn't make any sense until you find that last piece. It has to make sense or it doesn't work.

Being on tour sends me crazy, I drink too much and out comes the John Mcenroe in me.

Look, as long as we can make records and sell enough so we can do some shows, that's all I want. You know what? I just want to play guitar and be in a band. Same as I always did.

I don't think it's good to be sentimental, so I try not to be.

All these fifty-year-old guys wearing baseball caps and shorts and acting like children. It winds me up. Men don't have to take responsibility anymore. Most of the guys I know would punch me on the nose for saying this, but maybe we do have to bring back conscription.

It's always sad when you start to hate what you love.

If you don't have a flag sticking out
of your ass, you must be a communist.

The thing about Janis is that she just looked so unique, an ugly duckling dressed as a princess, fearlessly so. Seeing her live was like watching a boxing match. Her performance was so in your face and electrifying that it really put you right there in the moment. There you were living your nice little life in the suburbs and suddenly there was this train wreck, and it was Janis.

I've done lots of songs for film soundtracks and things like that - stuff I'm not ashamed of, but that doesn't represent my legacy with the Pretenders.

The Clash were innovative, radical and helped drive a change in music that was ground-breaking. In comparison to some of the music today they sounded like they meant it. I still listen to their music today to remind myself what music made with commitment sounds like.

I'm not a figurehead for anything. I was a single mom with two kids. What else was I going to do? It was either be in a band or be a waitress.

I have no sense of patriotism, but I do have a sense of community.

Don't get a job in an abattoir. Don't be a butcher. The idea that people have to do these jobs for a livelihood is ridiculous. They can get other jobs. Shoplift, man. Better to be a prostitute than cut an animal's head off for a living.

After writing a song, there's first a feeling of elation followed by the sinking feeling that it will never happen again, and you go back to thinking that you can't do it. It creates an ongoing feeling of inadequacy.

Yeah, the industry has always been both the enemy and the best friend of the artist. They need each other. That's the bottom line.

I feel displaced when I'm back in America, like a visitor. I feel like if I don't get a cup of tea I'm going to lose my mind.

The meat industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars lying to the public about their product. But no amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat. The facts are absolutely clear: Eating meat is bad for human health, catastrophic for the environment, and a living nightmare for animals

When you're alone and don't know anybody it's easy to meet people.

You try to be arrogant in songs because you can't be in real life.

In my experience lust only ever leads to misery. All that suspicion and jealousy and anguish it unleashes. I don't want those things in my life.

It's amazing how much can happen in a few weeks on the road. This was going to become a habit to me; seeing new places would become like a drug. Better than drugs. And there was a whole world still to discover. I was as optimistic as a junkie in a poppy field.

I don't believe there is any justifiable reason for killing any animal unless perhaps if it's killing you! That would be negotiable.

Let's get rid of all the economic (expletive) this country represents! Bring it on, I hope the Muslims win!

There are no real men.

Well, 'any experience is better than no experience;, was my motto.