Chrissie Hynde Quotations

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.

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?

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

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.

A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss

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.

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.

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.

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

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'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.

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.

We (expletive) deserve to get bombed. Bring it on, I hope the Muslims win!

Obviously it's not just the Gap. But until they stop using leather from India and China, we should stop buying it.

Bring it on! Give us what we deserve!

In France, it's a very healthy protest scene and very common for people to take to the streets to air their grievances. We went to a police station, we filled out a form, we'll pay a fine. That's it.

I pray that their walk to freedom will not be as long as yours was.

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

There are no real men.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

No amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat.

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

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.

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.

How much did you get for your soul?

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

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

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 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.

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

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 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 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.

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 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