Patti Smith Quotes

I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and ...

To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, f...

I have great respect for my parents. I got such beautiful things from both of them. It doesn't mean ...

Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.

I'm not really a musician. I'm a performer, and I love rock n' roll. I've embraced rock n' roll beca...

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged im...

You can't change the world you can't fix the whole environment. But you can recycle. You can turn th...

Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the c...

I'm a human being, I'm a friend, I'm a mom, I'm a writer, and I'm an artist. I do play electric guit...

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.

I didn't love Jim Morrison 'cause he was self-destructive. I loved him because of his work. Because ...

My mom loved rock n' roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around. He liked clas...

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

My dad got a job in a factory in Philadelphia, so I was raised in Germantown in a sort of a barracks...

I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,that Joplin had the last drunken throat...

A real prison breakfast" I said."Yeah, but we are free."And that summed it up.

My parents had three kids right after the Second World War, and we were all sort of sickly. Then I h...

I'm not afraid of terrorism at all. I'm afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of glo...

Good news doesn't necessarily have to be a positive thing. Bringing good news is imparting hope to o...

What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some ...

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.

Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket...

For Christmas every year, my mother used to give me those cheap little diaries that would tell your ...

For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really...

Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and k...

I get irritated with the world. I get irritated with politicians. I get very irritated with governme...

A writer or any artist can’t expect to be embraced by the people. I've done records where it seemed ...

Please, no matter how we advance in technology please don't abandon the book-there is nothing in our...

The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice...

It's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. There's nothing...

I don't fuck much with the past but I fuck plenty with the future.

I work to Glenn Gould in the morning and go to sleep listening to Parsifal.

The thing is, it's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. T...

We want things we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment, sound, sensation. I want to hear...

What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had c...

When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought ...

I've said this over and over, but I'll say it a million more times - I'm concerned more about the de...

The thing is that as you grow through life, the pursuit of art and the pursuit of new ideas, all the...

I come from a real working class background, and I didn't know anyone sophisticated - except I saw E...

The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communicatio...

He took twelve pictures that day.Within a few days he showed me the contact sheet. "This one has the...

It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was.

He wrote me a note to say we would create art together and we would make it, with or without the res...

Christ was a man worthy to rebel against, for he was rebellion itself.

It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies (p. 171).

Everything comes down so pasteurizedeverything comes down 16 degreesthey say your amplifier is too l...

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in...

We didn’t have to talk then, and that is real friendship. Never uncomfortable with silence, which, i...

Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transfor...

People wouldn't know this about me, but I adore ball gowns. I love their cut, their architecture and...

Bringing good news is imparting hope to one's fellow man. The idea of redemption is always good news...

Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.

I had one of those headaches. It kept pounding and got into that crazy realm where the guillotine se...

And the eye became a body, the murky heart of a rose. The sinister shadow of an orchid. Or the indol...

How wonderful it would be to meet an angel, I mused, but then I immediately realised that I already ...

How wonderful it would be to meet an angel, I mused, but then I immediately realised I already had. ...

Is it time uninterrupted? Only the present comprehended? Are our thoughts nothing but passing trains...

He picks the lock of her dreams with her own hairpin.

Home is a desk. The amalgamation of a dream. Home is the cats, my books, and my work never done. All...

I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and ...

He recognizes voices within silence. (of Max Sebald)

And then I walked out, straight through the twilight, treading the beaten earth. There were no dust ...

I may not know what is in your mind, but I know how your mind works.

In my way of thinking, anything is possible. Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, ...

All I needed for the mind was to be led to new stations. All I needed for the heart was to visit a p...

-What is nothing? I impetuously asked.-It is what you can see of your eyes without a mirror, was the...

It ain't so easy writing about nothin

Personally, I'm not much for symbolism. I never get it. Why can't things be just as they are? I neve...

I read and feel that same compulsion; the desire to possess what he has written, which can only be s...

I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth

...the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of ...

I had no concept of what life at the Chelsea Hotel would be like when we checked in, but I soon real...

In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were o...

William Burroughs was simultaneously old and young. Part sheriff, part gumshoe. All writer. He had a...

I preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it.

Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.

Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?

Observing people taking in the work I had watched Robert create was an emotional experience. It had ...

I wanted to cry so bad, but my tears are inside. A blindfold keeps them there. I can’t see today. Pa...

I paced while he slept, ricocheting like a dove skidding the lonely confines of a Joseph Cornell box...

He wasn't supposed to die,' he cried out, somewhat desperately, petulantly, like a spoiled child. Bu...

Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, dis...

I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one

We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the re...

There's always new stuff, that's for sure.

We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.

My mom loved rock 'n roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around.