Chrissie Hynde quotes:

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.

Remember those black-and-white films with Frank Sinatra? Those guys looked like men and they were only 27! Listen to Otis Redding singing 'Try A Little Tenderness'. That was a man who understood what a man has to know in the world. Show me a real man now! Where are they?

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.

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

I don't know any guitar player, any of the real greats, who don't rate Joni Mitchell up there with the best of them.

I think Bob Dylan's a good songwriter. I think he's the best songwriter in the world probably.

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.

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

I don't know any guitar player, any of the real greats, who don't rate Joni Mitchell up there with the best of them."

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.

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.

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

The so-called feminist writers were disgusted with me. I did my thing, and so I guess by feminist standards I'm a feminist. That suits me fine.

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

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.

A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss

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.

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

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.

A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss.

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.

Let's face it, we do have this mating instinct that just won't quit, you know? Just when you think it's safe to come out, there it is again. You're driving down the street, and it's the last thing on your mind, and all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, he looks nice," and you're up a lamppost.

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.

I preferred rock when it was in the dark, when it was a secret between me and the audience, when it wasn't mainstream.

I don't listen to music, and I don't particularly watch television, so if anyone wants to come over and just hang out with me sitting at the table in silence, you know, eating a dish of rice... I don't get too many takers.

I just want to play guitar and be in a band. Same as I always did.

I'm not going to judge what I do.

I was never too interested in high school. I mean, I never went to a dance, I never went out on a date, I never went steady. It became pretty awful for me. Except, of course, I could go see bands, and that was the kick. I used to go to Cleveland just to see any band. So I was in love a lot of the time, but mostly with guys in bands that I had never met. For me, knowing that Brian Jones was out there, and later that Iggy Pop was out there, made it kind of hard for me to get too interested in the guys that were around me. I had, uh, bigger things in mind.

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

Whatever I'm already doing becomes enhanced when I smoke pot. It can also be demotivating, because if I'm not doing anything and I smoke a joint, it enhances just sitting in a chair. Then I don't even want to get up to change a record. That might not be a bad thing, but you have to get things done once in a while.

I like Madonna a lot. I think she's really good and I think she's a good singer. I think she looks good and she's got a nice kind of... I don't think she's got a sinister or cynical vibe around her, and I don't think she's got any sort of bullshit around her.

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

How much did you get for your soul?

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.

No amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat.

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.

You know, when you're 23 and you get pissed, I mean drunk, you can just go crazy and it's all right. But if you're 43 and you do it, it's like your best friend's mother who used to come in pissed and everybody was really embarrassed. It just doesn't go down well, you know, after a certain age.

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.

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

In fact, I've only been to a couple of other people's dinner parties. But I must admit, I really enjoyed the few I've been to, but I'm not really on that circuit.

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...I think domesticity certainly doesn't make it easy to write, you know, because you've got a lot of distractions and I think a writer is always looking for distractions.

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

I had a very colorless background, and when I left Ohio and moved to England, nobody knew who I was and I had a real freedom. I could be free to experiment and experience things and I liked that a lot.

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.

There'sthemeat eaters and there'sus. And that'stheway I look at the world.

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 think if I lost an edge, or the music didn't have the aggression or whatever, which is maybe one of the hallmarks of what I do, if indeed it is, I still think if you have something original in what you do and you keep doing that, then you're all right.

There are no real men.

I hope there is an edge to what I do.

The people who are making a lot of money and eating at McDonald's and watching MTV and have square eyeballs, they're over there. And then maybe there's like five other people left in America and I'm just waiting for them to come up with something interesting.

When I was 16, the pot weeded out the men from the boys, there were the heads and the straights. Now it's almost like money can weed it out, you know?

The cliché of that sort of wasted, renegade, drugged-out musician of the '70s is kind of dead and gone now. And I suppose that a lot of people still keep relying on that, or some kind of image to perpetuate something that they think they're supposed to sound like. But that kind of takes you away from real inspiration and, you know, real artistic discovery of the individual.

Music reflects the time that it's being made in, and so certainly, the music that's being made in 1986 by a 14-year-old kid will reflect some magic of 1986 for him if he's an inspired and creative musician.

It's my tough luck if things happen that are complicated.

I'm 34 now, I like to say 35 because it makes me look better for my age, and I have to keep a little bit of a profile so that every three years if I do put a record out, I don't have to substantiate where I've been for three years and why the silence and the sort of false mysterioso.

I just want to be as regular, and get by with doing the least amount of publicity, but still look really cool, you know? And get a bit of respect.

Everyone has their set of problems and I'm certainly not going to sensationalize mine or try to evoke pity or sympathy out of people because I don't think they warrant that sort of thing. That's my private karma that I have to work out.

Once you stop drinking and smoking and stuff, it really gets on your nerves, all that nonsense going on.

Realize your own potential and try to live out your expectations of your potential.

I'm with someone who's got very high standards, and he doesn't tolerate all these ridiculous vices very easily. That's not reason enough to marry someone, although people have gotten married for less.

Real success is not being on the cover of a magazine; it's knowing that you've done, and enjoyed doing, what you set out to do.

I don't want my children to be at a disadvantage, growing up in the limelight, because then they have to live up to an identity already cut out for them, relating all the time to being so-and-so's daughter or so-and-so's son.

The celebrity thing is such a thing in itself now.

For my 21st birthday, I think my mother wanted to give me a watch, or something, you know, some kind of traditional thing. And I said, "Well, if you're going to buy me something, there's a Gibson Melody Maker guitar advertised in the paper for 60 dollars. Do you think I could have that?" And I think that she was very disappointed that at 21 I was still messing around with that sort of thing. She didn't understand what it was all about. But now she understands it, and likes it.

I don't wish to embarrass anyone.

I expect people to at least use some thought.

I always thought if a guy could play the guitar, he must be something really special.

There's this celebrity thing that goes along with making records or being a rock star. I'm into this celebrity thing just enough to let me go on making records and making a living out of it.

I'm not saying I'd already done anything, actually, but I'd passed my experimental streak.

I don't like to be recognized on the street or in restaurants, and I don't like the whole celebrity thing.

I don't really go out to clubs, but if I did, I'd just want to go rock out with my mates or whatever.

I've never been to a Hollywood party, although I imagine that it might be fun.

When you're in a band and you're a girl, you know, guys just don't ... it's not the same kind of a groove as a girl walking up wearing a mac with nothing on underneath, or knocking on someone's door at three in the morning.

Things go in waves, and I might make a record every three years. That's enough for me, that satisfies me. And it satisfies the so-called public, because they don't really need a record every year. They don't even want one. There's other stuff out there for them to listen to.

I'd really rather just be the anonymous Mr. Nobody who I always was up until I first went onstage. I liked that.

If you're purely derivative in what you do, then you could very easily get lost along the way. But for me, I might want to even do something else for a while.

I don't like to think that I'm on a treadmill of album, tour, promotion and all that.

I can only cook brown rice and vegetables, so I don't get too many people coming over for dinner parties or anything.