Pretenders II (1981)

• Take, take, take, takin' what you don't need
  You'll get, get, gettin' what you don't need
  Stand back, take a look and take heed
  All the children in God's kingdom bleed
  See the networks of concrete and steel
  They've no mystery but what they reveal
  Tells a story of a future that's void
  Of the beauty and the majesty that life on
  Earth is meant to be...
• Talk, talk, talk, talk about the government
  And not a word about political favor
  Everything touched is my political choice
  The life you take is your political voice
• Do unto others as you wish be done to you
  There's a million lies 'round everything true
  You slaughter when you feast
  You disrespect the beast
  Make our beds and lie there, take your share
  Waste not want not pick it up
  Waste not want...
  • Waste Not Want Not

Reckless (2015)

Reckless: My Life as a Pretender, New York: Doubleday, 2015.

• Chons, on rhythm guitar, had long black hair and blue eyes and was the first person I ever met who said she never ate meat, and when she told me that, I never ate it again either. Best thing that ever happened to me. All it took was the mere suggestion. Nobody else was vegetarian that I knew of, but I started to think of meat-eating as a very weird practice and secretly regarded meat-eaters with distaste, almost contempt. Why would anyone kill an animal if they didn’t need to? I learned to live and associate with “the majority,” but never respected them. I got used to having this lack of regard for 97 percent of the population.

• Being vegetarian was to inform everything, the course of my destiny. I was baffled that the entire hippie nation hadn't become vegetarian en masse. It made no sense as eating meat went against the whole dialogue. Were the hippies just as hypocritical as the rest of them? I couldn't admit that but I understood why I loved songs like “The Loner” so much. I didn't want to be like the majority anyway. The majority were always wrong.

• Everything in nature lives according to some order so it seems unlikely that humans live outside this system, even if they try to resist their instincts. That's how we can be sure we're not animals, this refusal to abide by what we know is good for us. If an animal's instinct tells him to avoid something he has no trouble keeping a wide berth. We, on the other hand, run in the direction of danger if it offers a thrill or satisfies a curiosity.