Pat Benatar quotes:

There are so many young women coming up through the ranks. Adele is an amazing singer. Beyonce has great stage presence. She's just a beautiful woman. I love how everyone has just taken charge of their lives and careers.

It was very difficult when I was trying to figure out how to have a marriage and babies and do this at the same time. There was no handbook. You were making it up as you went along.

Before I put another notch in my lipstick case, you better make sure you put me in my place.

Gays are the best, though - we just did Gay Pride in Long Beach and in Tampa. And they're the best audience. They're so enthusiastic. They come dressed up - it's really fun. They're crazy and I love them. They're sweet as can be. Even my macho husband, he has a great time, too. He's so cool, he doesn't care. He loves them.

People's lives change dramatically over such a long time period, and I think that if you're still vital, and you're still interested in writing and things like that, of course your music evolves and reflects where you are in your life.

Most chick singers say 'if you hurt me, I'll die'... I say, 'if you hurt me, I'll kick your ass.'

Everything changes all the time, and unfortunately, everyone who knows what you do by buying records only hears a small amount of what's going on in your life.

If you're retired, it's a blessing. You know, if you want to keep working and doing what you want to do, it's not a blessing as all - it's a curse.

I like Lady Gaga because I like that she pushes the envelope.

I love "Heartbreaker." "Heartbreaker" stands up for me still. It still works to me. The sentiment is still timely and it just works. But I don't want to do that again. I'm not interested in re-creating that. That was great and I'll just leave it there.

I've enjoyed every age I've been, and each has had its own individual merit. Every laugh line, every scar, is a badge I wear to show I've been present, the inner rings of my personal tree trunk that I display proudly for all to see. Nowadays, I don't want a "perfect" face and body; I want to wear the life I've lived.

I love Katy Perry, she is a wonderful pop singer.

Hell is for Children' is amazing to do every night and 'Promises in the Dark' and 'Love Is a Battlefied,' of course, but my absolute favorite would be 'Heartbreaker.' It's the one that started everything, so it has a very special place in my heart. And it still rocks every night! It's so fun to do.

You can't change the past so don't let it haunt you. You can change the future but first you've got to want to.

We live and learn from our mistakes, the deepest cuts are healed by faith.

Once I had kids, my whole attitude changed. I was like, "You make a spinal cord from scratch and we'll talk."

Love and pain become one in the same in the eyes of a wounded child.

You don't want to trash what you've done; that's your history.

I can't stand what people do to each other. I think we're brilliant as a species. I think we are amazing. I think that God is incredible, that He just gave us everything. Everything in our face. Everything for us to use. And sometimes we're such shitheads. And it makes me crazy.

But the soul of touring and the heart of it is basically every day is like putting up a circus tent.

First of all, I'm pretty private about my personal life.

If at any moment of the day I ever think I'm remotely cool at all, which is hardly ever, I have two daughters who make sure that never happens.

I don't know who it is, probably some geek - said that when a female gets to a certain age, all her sexuality goes. She's not a vital person anymore. If you're somebody's mother you're not vital. This is such crap, because you're still a person. You still have all the things that you came into childbearing with and all that kind of stuff.

I never looked at people or singing as commodities.

You're a heartbreaker, dream maker, love taker, don't you mess around with me.

Love and pain become one and the same in the eyes of a wounded child...

The great times were never as great as they seem in the rearview mirror.

When you have girl children, they torture you! If at any moment of the day I ever think I'm remotely cool at all, which is hardly ever, I have two daughters who make sure that never happens. They say, 'Mom, you didn't really wear that?' And I say, 'Yes, and pretty much everyone saw it.'

You shouldn't have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh.

When the first record came out, I'd go down to radio stations pretty much every day to get the record played, and I would walk in and they'd tell us how much they loved the record, but they weren't sure how much they could play it because they were already playing a girl.

At fifty. I thought I would be done. I thought I'd be finished by now. So I have no idea. I just leave it.

Everything must change, everything must move forward.

Everything that we do I pretty much want to be organic, so if that happens, then that's okay with me. But I'm not interested in trying to re-create what once was. That doesn't interest me; it's boring.

I don't care who's on the label, because I have a job to do.

I felt I had a responsibility to do the right thing. And then I wanted to do the right thing by my family and there was no handbook.

I have different reasons for the way that I react to things now that I have kids. It's not about me, it's about my children going out into this world that makes me say, "What the hell are you all doing?" I have to put them out there, and then I have to worry.

I love Katy Perry and Lady GaGa. I think GaGa's pushing the envelope every day and I really like that.

I play ten, twelve weeks out of the year, five times a week, and I really still love to do it. But that's not what I'm interested in doing now. Even though I love it.

I read somewhere that we are all more than we know. And I really believe that. Everybody is worth something, and think of all the amazing things that you could be to each other, to people you don't even know, of all the things that you could accomplish.

I spent most of my adult life as someone's mother and the rest of my life trying to make sure that children are safe. So this to me is - we wrote Hell Is For Children in 1979.

I wasn't a visionary but I literally had my finger on the pulse of the women of America.

I wasn't interested in fabricating things and altering what I did to make hit records.

In my early 20s, I had this idea that I was going to front a band, like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. I didn't just want to be the chick singing ballads about somebody breaking my heart. Everyone in the business said, 'Why don't you do what Olivia Newton-Jonn and Linda Ronstadt are doing?' But I wanted to sing as a powerful female who wasn't afraid to speak her mind or be sexual.

It's really hard to make records and concentrate and have a free mind, because I have this whole other life. If you don't have kids it's a whole other thing. I think you can be fifty and still have a rock and roll lifestyle; you can still perpetuate that.

It's so hard [to be parent] and no matter how old you get and how experienced you get you're always scared you're going to screw it up and you're going to make a mistake.

Love is a battlefield.

Love is more than a one way reflection, stop using sex as a weapon.

My most important inspirational job that I do is raising those kids. That's my job. And that's where my ambition goes. But I have a life. I'm not only their mother. I'm still who I was before, I just don't get to be it all the time.

Of course, you're not making records in a vacuum. I'm not making them for myself. It would be nice if I could get more people to hear them. But if I have to sell my soul to the devil to do it, I won't.

We can't afford to be innocent, stand up and face the enemy. It's a do or die situation, we will be invincible.

We'll just play it cool, like Elvis at 19.

When I started it still wasn't okay to be this age and still make this kind of music. And believe me, I consider our stuff to be much poppier than - we're not on like cutting edge, that kind of thing anymore. And even though we're not doing Britney Spears music or Nsync, it's still what I consider to be pop music. So that does give you a little bit more longevity, I guess. But if somebody told me I'd be getting up there and singing "Heartbreaker" at fifty I'd laugh. So I don't know, I have no idea.

When I was a kid about joining the Peace Corps. It said it was "the hardest job you'll ever love." This is what parenting is, as far as I'm concerned. This is parenting. That is the friggin' Peace Corps. Because you don't love doing this - this is the thing you love the most in your life, it's the best thing you ever do.

When you have children your life - this is my job and that's my life. So it's a totally different thing. They're my priority, they have to be, and they always will be. I have to do them first. So this always gets pushed in the back.

With the power of conviction, there is no sacrifice.

You have to be true, you have to be honest.. Don't do anything, just figure out what it is that is true to you, what makes you happiest to do and be out there. And if it doesn't work, then you just have to call it a day and go find something else. But don't make it up. Don't go out there and pretend to be something you aren't.

You're the Picasso of pain.