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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.
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Once you stop drinking and smoking and stuff, it really gets on your nerves, all that nonsense going on.
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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.
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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.
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I'm all for bootlegging. A record costs $20 . . . who can afford that?
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If you don't have a flag sticking out of your ass, you must be a communist.
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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.
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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.
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I've never been to a Hollywood party, although I imagine that it might be fun.
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A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It's my tough luck if things happen that are complicated.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.