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.
My heroes would never let me down; they never have. I've never been disappointed by any of them.
My policy is to do the least amount to get by.
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?
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.
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 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'm not a complete moron like most musicians whom I've met.
I have no sense of patriotism, but I do have a sense of community.
I'll make music as long as I can sing and stand up and hold a guitar and I feel like doing this.
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.
A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss.
I don't think it's good to be sentimental, so I try not to be.
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.
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.
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.
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.
