Chrissie Hynde Quotes

I did it because the offer of a record contract came along and it seemed like it might be more fun than being a waitress. Now, I'm not so sure.

It's always sad when you start to hate what you love.

Everybody had to own and maintain a car. It was the biggest con in the Land of the Free. Well, along with the tobacco and alcohol industries, which also pumped out poison and had the nation in their grip. Pharmaceuticals and firearms would join the party in due course.

After writing a song, there’s first a feeling of elation followed by the sinking feeling that it will never happen again, and you go back to thinking that you can't do it. It creates an ongoing feeling of inadequacy.

…always carry an empty coke bottle, one in each hand, when going out alone at night. Nobody wants to get smashed in the head with a bottle.

Confidence is usually a bluff – if you’re lucky you might have it, but frankly nobody will know the difference

Smoking while vacuuming makes vacuuming better but smoking while sitting on the couch makes vacuuming harder.

I can't not be alive

(May I point out how much I loathe the distinctions of black, gay or anything that implies anything.) I wanted to find that colorless Island that Charlie Mingus talked about. Like Lee Morgan, I was in search of a new land.

I was constantly imagining a couple of comic or sci-fi writers at the end of the fifties, stoned on weed and speed, trying to outdo each other with outrageous scenarios of the Beat world of the future. It was called England.

Before Janis Joplin even hit the stage I was remarking to my friends how incredible the light show was. “Chris, the show hasn’t started yet,” they replied. But on three different tabs of acid, guess what, the show HAD started.

Well, 'any experience is better than no experience;, was my motto.

When you’re alone and don’t know anybody it’s easy to meet people.

The one thing I hated about drugs was the assholes you had to hang out with to get them.

It's always sad when you start to hate what you love

They say you always feel better after a good cry but when does the feeling better start?

I enjoy my little meditations and find that humor is everywhere once you strip away your grief.

So I listened to Jimmy and he always had the answer. That lasted another fifteen years or so, Jimmy in my ear telling me what to do, and then slowly, he seemed to fade away.

But being around Malcolm and Viv, I started to understand the meaning of glamour; that how you present yourself to your fellow man is a way of communicating ideas.

I knew then that victories were always just the other side of tragedy

Dave knocked on the door. “Iggy is in the bar,” he said. I drew my eyes back on and, as nonchalantly as I could manage, slipped down to the bar. “Hey! This is great,” he said, looking like Alfred E. Neuman and shaking my hand. He seemed as happy to meet me as I was him, as he introduced me to his girlfriend, Esther. In accordance with everybody else who’d met him, I found out that you either got Jim Osterberg, the straight-A Midwestern bookworm, or Iggy Pop, the drug-crazed, platinum-blond lunatic. The guy in the bar that night was Jim Osterberg.

It’s amazing how much can happen in a few weeks on the road. This was going to become a habit to me; seeing new places would become like a drug. Better than drugs. And there was a whole world still to discover. I was as optimistic as a junkie in a poppy field.

To address another human was one thing, but a singing voice was capable of so much more. Romance made you weak and love was about suffering. I wanted what the jazz musicians were looking for: the supreme. I wanted my voice to take life by the throat and rattle it until it made sense.

I held my plastic “Jesus Saves” cross near a lightbulb before going to bed so it would glow in the dark. I didn’t think I was religious and didn’t think about whether I believed or not. Having said that, I could never understand how anyone with a modicum of rebelliousness or sense of fair play couldn’t appreciate He who hung with lowlifes and healed the sick. I especially liked the story about Him driving those merchants out of the temple. Even Jesus could lose it if pressed.

We had no sexual experience but we had Robert Plant.

And in the end, this story is a story of drug abuse

A frustrated musician (the cliché of music journalism)

threating

You had to pay the Rent in Time, fella.

I learned that the things you find the most embarrassing about yourself are the very things the public will love you for.

Paul McCartney was at the microphone singing Ricky Nelson’s “Lonesome Town” to an almost empty Royal Albert Hall. Many of the other performers on the bill were waiting to rehearse but had melted away to the edges of the auditorium to give him some space. Neil Finn was talking to Johnny Marr, Sinéad O’Connor was there with her son, and the emcee for the night, Eddie Izzard, was looking over the running order with Chrissie Hynde. George Michael arrived quietly and was waiting patiently for his turn to sing.

The French embraced the best of modern culture, but didn’t throw out what was ancient, beautiful and worthy of preservation.

Nothing was going to compromise my freedom to walk the streets whenever, wherever and with whomever I wanted. I saw fame as being akin to living in a high-security prison and I didn’t want to go there. How can you win just enough and then leave the table? Go to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting and you’ll see it’s easier said than done. I’d have to be very careful to not let things get out of control. I resolutely avoided looking at charts, bank balances, reviews, radio or television appearances, and carried on like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.