Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 thing I've ever offered the public is some music. If they like the music, that's great. Turn on the radio. If they don't like it, switch it off.
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 know if I feel like an outsider or an insider; I just feel like I always did. I don't have one of those stories where I felt like no one understood me.
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 just liked music, and I really liked rock guitar. I didn't think I was going to be a rock guitar player, because I was a girl. I would've been too shy to play with guys.
I did make a lot of my own clothes. I used to love to sew, so I made my own shirts and bell bottoms and modified my own clothes, which is what we did during the punk period.
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.
All I can really remember doing was listening to the radio and listening to records when I was at school. I wasn't very academic, and I certainly wasn't a very good student.
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 that Michael Jackson died. He's probably dead now, but I don't think he died when they said he did. I think he wanted out of the game anyway, so he just disappeared.
If you're an artist, you need to work. It doesn't matter how old you are, who you are. It doesn't matter if you're 12: if you draw, you draw. If you're 85 and you paint, you paint.
I'm kind of a brown-rice hippy. I don't think I'd have much success if I tried a dinner party, but I'm not going to have one, and I've never been invited to one, and that's just fine.
I bought a Stella McCartney jacket in Salt Lake City. It's nice. It looks like a pea coat. I love Stella's stuff, so wherever I go in the world, I will always go in and buy her stuff.
You're lucky if you find something that makes you feel like yourself; that's the one time that you feel like you know who you are. Most people are struggling to find that out all the time.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
In this business, 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.
I am very grateful to punk because I was a girl, and I felt like if I got in a band, I'd be kind of a novelty act, but punk was all about non-discrimination. No one cared because it was punk, so, you know, anyone could do anything they wanted.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For 35 years, I've said, 'I'll never go solo.' But after a period of time - and this isn't just for an artist, but for anybody - all the things you never wanted to do eventually become the only things left that you haven't done. So they start looking pretty interesting.
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?
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'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.
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
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.
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.
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'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 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.
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.
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.