Patti Smith Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Patti Smith.
Famous Quotes By Patti Smith
I don't think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I'm concerned about are at the top of other people's agendas - not right now, when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change. — Patti Smith
All doors are open to the believer. It is the lesson of the Samaritan woman at the well. — Patti Smith
These things were in my mind from the first moment I entered the vocal booth. The gratitude I had for rock and roll as it pulled me through a difficult adolescence. The joy I experienced when I danced. The moral power I gleaned in taking responsibility for one's action.
Patti Smith — Patti Smith
Inside it he inscribed a few lines of poetry, portraying us as the gypsy and the fool, one creating silence; one listening closely to the silence. In the clanging twirl of our lives, these roles would reverse many times — Patti Smith
What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant. — Patti Smith
When I was a teenager, I had trouble getting a boyfriend, so I imagined Arthur Rimbaud or Bob Dylan as my boyfriend. — Patti Smith
I was both scattered and stymied, surrounded by unfinished songs and abandoned poems. I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in. Todd — Patti Smith
I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one. — Patti Smith
Why do people want to know exactly who I am? Am I a poet? Am I this or that? I've always made people wary. First they called me a rock poet. Then I was a poet that dabbled in rock. Then I was a rock person who dabbled in art. — Patti Smith
I didn't waste my time on things I didn't love. — Patti Smith
Patti, did art get us?'
I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.'
Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint. — Patti Smith
The cafe was empty, but the cook was unscrewing the outlet plate above my seat. I took my book into the bathroom and read while he finished. When I emerged, the cook was gone and a woman was ready to sit in my seat.
- Excuse me, this is my table.
- Did you reserve it?
- Well, no, but it's my table.
- Did you actually sit here? There's nothing on the table and you have your coat on.
I stood there mutely. If this were an episode of Midsomer Murders she would surely be found strangled in a wild ravine behind an abandoned vicarage. — Patti Smith
From very early on in my childhood - four, five years old - I felt alien to the human race. I felt very comfortable with thinking I was from another planet, because I felt disconnected - I was very tall and skinny, and I didn't look like anybody else, I didn't even look like any member of my family. — Patti Smith
I didn't begin my life in 1975 with 'Horses.' I recorded 'Horses' in 1975, but was drawing in Paris in 1969. — Patti Smith
I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife. — Patti Smith
I was quite an insomniac. I rarely slept as a child. Having God to talk to at night was nice. — Patti Smith
Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire. — Patti Smith
When I was young, all I wanted was to write books and be an artist. — Patti Smith
I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did. — Patti Smith
How is it that we never completely comprehend our love for someone until they're gone? — Patti Smith
As an artist, I used to think that my responsibility was to do good work. But I had to learn from the '70s on that being a public figure presents another aspect of responsibility. — Patti Smith
-Such dark thoughts for the sake of a corner table. My inner Jiminy Cricket spoke up. Oh, all right, I said. May the world's small things fill her with delight.
-Good, good, spoke the cricket.
-and may she purchase a lottery ticket and possess the winning number,
-Unnecessary, but fine.
-And may she order a thousand such bags, each one more splendid than the last, delivered and dumped by FedEx, and may she be trapped by a storeroom's worth, without food, water, or cell phone.
-I'm leaving, said my conscience.
-Me too, I said, and I went back out on the street. — Patti Smith
- I been here before, haven't I?
He just sat there staring out at the plain.
Son of a bitch, I thought. He's ignoring me.
- Hey, I said, I'm not the dead, not a shade in passing. I'm flesh and blood here.
He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started writing.
- You got to at least look at me, I said. After all, it is my dream.
I drew closer. Close enough to see what he was writing. He had his notebook open to a blank page and three words suddenly materialized.
Nope, it's mine.
- Well, I'll be damned, I murmured. I shaded my eyes and stood there looking out toward what he was seeing - dust clouds flatbed tumbleweed white sky - a whole lot of nothing.
- The writer is a conductor, he drawled. — Patti Smith
My parents were very humanistic, but where we lived was not the cultural center of the world. Hardly. So I came to New York for two reasons: to find my own kin and also to get a job. And that's what I came to New York for in '67. — Patti Smith
Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine. — Patti Smith
In fact, I thought my calling was to be a painter. — Patti Smith
In time we often become one with those we once failed to understand. — Patti Smith
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 guitar and all of that, but in the end, I'm just a person. — Patti Smith
I craved honesty, yet found dishonesty in myself. Why commit to art? For self-realization, or for itself? It seemed indulgent to add to the glut unless one offered illumination. — Patti Smith
I wrote to give myself something to read. — Patti Smith
When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel. — Patti Smith
The only thing you can count on is change. — Patti Smith
I like revisiting my early work, and people like to hear it. I don't make people suffer through any experimentation or new material. When I go see an artist, I want to hear the songs that drew me to them, so I do the same. — Patti Smith
Most women writers don't interest me because they're hung up with being a woman, they're hung up with being Jewish, they're hung up with being somebody or other. Rather than just going, just spurting, just creating. — Patti Smith
I learned a lot from Arthur Rimbaud. People talk about how he wanted to be a seer and do that through the derangement of the senses. What they forget was that he also advocated, sternly and austerely, that one must be able to go through all that - and then articulate it. — Patti Smith
Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply. — Patti Smith
I wish I could just project everything on the paper, — Patti Smith
I get up, and if I feel out of sorts, I'll do some exercises, I'll feed my cat, then I go get my coffee, take a notebook, and write for a couple of hours. — Patti Smith
I believe myself to be an artist. That was my calling, to do my work, and what's most important to me is to do the best work I possibly can. And that is what means the most, that is what will endure. — Patti Smith
I hate being confined, especially when it's for my own good. — Patti Smith
I preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it. - reference to Andy Warhol — Patti Smith
As we headed back to Tangier we saw a shepherd guiding a camel with her calf. Rolling down the window, I called out: - What is the little one's name? - His name is Jimi Hendrix. - Hooray, I wake from yesterday! - Inshallah! he called out. — Patti Smith
If I'm taking a picture of Brancusi's grave, I know that there's something of him, of his mortal remains, beneath my feet, and there's something beautiful about that. — Patti Smith
It was an unexpected encounter that slowly altered the course of my life. — Patti Smith
Nothing will stifle your human evolution more than fame and fortune. — Patti Smith
I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book. — Patti Smith
I am still a very optimistic person. I continue to do work with joy. — Patti Smith
Behind her smile I could see o many other things, a catastrophic sadness. I had assisted to the selfless guardians of the unfortunate children who suffered infinite loss, their family, their homes, and nature as they had known and trusted. — Patti Smith
When I started making music, we'd lost a lot of our great people. Rock was moving in a direction I didn't like. Rock was my generation's revolutionary, sexual, poetic, and political voice, but it had become corporatized. It was going into stadiums. It was so far removed from its basic roots. — Patti Smith
I like making records right now 'cause I can express myself that way in a very immediate, physical sense. You can always write a book, but you can't always do a rock 'n' roll record that's gonna work. — Patti Smith
The hand above turns those leaves of loves, all in all a timeless view. Each dream of life flung from paradise everlasting, ever new. — Patti Smith
My parents had three kids right after the Second World War, and we were all sort of sickly. Then I had a fourth sibling, with very serious asthma. The medical bills ... So my parents always struggled. — Patti Smith
I sang 'O Holy Night' with the Vatican orchestra, but also a Blake - a lullaby that William Blake wrote for the Christ child, and I set it to music, and the Vatican orchestra played the music. — Patti Smith
Since childhood, it was my dream to go where all the poets and artists had been. Rimbaud, Artaud, Brancusi, Camus, Picasso, Bresson, Goddard, Jeanne Moreau, Juliette Greco, everybody - Paris for me was a Mecca. — Patti Smith
What a model of an artist was for me was an artist who worked. Picasso was the ultimate model, because the work ethic he had. — Patti Smith
I know that some people have different personas for the different things they do, and I'm not criticizing that - maybe it's a good thing - but I'm the same old person, so I take everything in stride. — Patti Smith
I'm not really a nostalgic person. — Patti Smith
Images have their way of dissolving and then abruptly returning, pulling along the joy and pain attached to them like tin cans rattling from the back of an old-fashioned wedding vehicle. — Patti Smith
I don't like answering to other people's philosophies. I don't have any philosophy, I just believe in stuff. Either I believe in something or I don't. Like, I believe in the Rolling Stones but not in the Dave Clark Five. There's nothing philosophic about it. Whenever I'm linked with a movement, it pisses me off. — Patti Smith
I work to Glenn Gould in the morning and go to sleep listening to Parsifal. — Patti Smith
My Morocco. I followed whatever train I wanted. I wrote without writing - of genies and hustlers and mythic travelers, my vagabondia. Then I would walk back home, happily — Patti Smith
I knew William Burroughs really well, and I was always star struck being around him. I adored him. — Patti Smith
What I wanted in life always was to write something as good as 'Pinocchio.' I wanted to write. I wanted to evolve. I wanted to grow. — Patti Smith
I was so involved in my boy-rhythms that I never came to grips with the fact that I was a girl. I was twelve years old when my mother took me inside and said, "You can't be outside wrestling without a T-shirt on." It was a trauma. — Patti Smith
These are the times, the times of our own, these are the shapes the world we formed. — Patti Smith
I had one of those headaches. It kept pounding and got into that crazy realm where the guillotine seems like a good idea. — Patti Smith
For a time Robert protected me, then was dependent on me, and then possessive of me. His transformation was the rose of Genet, and he was pierced deeply by his blooming. — Patti Smith
The issue of gender was never my biggest concern; my biggest concern was doing good work. When the feminist movement really got going, I wasn't an active part of it because I was more concerned with my own mental pursuits. — Patti Smith
I don't know about that. I'm not a very analytical person. I have various impulses. I've often quoted Walt Whitman's phrase "I contain multitudes." I understand that. — Patti Smith
There were no ashtrays and no sign of my philosophic cowpoke. I sensed he had been heading this way and most likely, spotting the spanking new paint job, just kept on going. I looked around. Nothing to hold me here, either, not even the dried carcass of a dead bee. — Patti Smith
I get irritated with the world. I get irritated with politicians. I get very irritated with governments and with corporations, but in terms of imagination - my imagination is always fertile. I'm either thinking of my own things or constantly engaged by the things that other people do. — Patti Smith
Wisdom was a teapot, pouring from above. Desolation angels, served it up with love. — Patti Smith
When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say."
"Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise."
"What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?"
"You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another."
In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life. — Patti Smith
I don't know why, the very first word on my very first record is 'Jesus.' I still invoke him as an entity to reckon with. — Patti Smith
I loved being a rock and roll star, but it wasn't what I wanted in life. — Patti Smith
I don't wanna be equal with anybody. I wanna be above equal. I don't think most people are equal to me. I'd like to communicate with everybody; I'd like to do something universal, I'd like to have the hit record of the world. But that's not the same as being equal. — Patti Smith
I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business. — Patti Smith
I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar. — Patti Smith
I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,
that Joplin had the last drunken throat,
that Morrison had the last enlightened mind. — Patti Smith
I never thought of being a performer, never thought of being a singer, never thought of being a photographer. It's just the trajectory of my work. I go to the medium that serves the vision. — Patti Smith
I know fashion is a material thing, but we live in a material world and I love clothes. — Patti Smith
I want to keep my life as unfettered as possible. So maybe I'll just pretend to get rare books from my catalogue, and not really get them. — Patti Smith
I wanted to cry so bad, but my tears are inside. A blindfold keeps them there. I can't see today. Patti, I don't know anything. — Patti Smith
Writing is not some quiet, closet act. — Patti Smith
I reflected on the fact that no matter how good I aspired to be, I was never going to achieve perfection — Patti Smith
Throughout my life, I happily deferred to family, companions, children. — Patti Smith
There is hardly a place in New York that you can't walk a block and a half and get a cup of coffee. Believe me, I've been all over the world. There's no place like that but New York City. — Patti Smith
I thought of something I learned from reading Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated. He tattoos lightning bolts on the ears of his horses so the sight of them will remind him of this as he rides. I tried to apply this lesson to the things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine. — Patti Smith
Some of us are born rebellious. Reading the story of Zelda Fitzgerald by Nancy Milford, I identified with her mutinous spirit. I remember passing shopwindows with my mother and asking why people didn't just kick them in. She explained that there were unspoken rules of social behavior, and that's the way we coexist as people. I felt instantly confined by the notion that we are born into a world where everything was mapped out by those before us. I struggled to suppress destructive impulses and worked instead on creative ones. Still, the small rule-hating self within me did not die. — Patti Smith
I'm off balance, not sure what's wrong. - You have misplaced joy, he said without hesitation. Without joy, we are as dead. - How do I find it again? - Find those who have it and bathe in their perfection. — Patti Smith
I don't consider writing a quiet, closet act.
I consider it a real physical act.
When I'm home writing on the typewriter, I go crazy.
I move like a monkey.
I've wet myself, I've come in my pants writing. — Patti Smith
My mother was real and her son was real. When he died she buried him. Now she is dead. Mother Courage and her children, my mother and her son. They are all stories now. — Patti Smith
I was busy thinking about the mystery of expanding network of seemingly unasawerable questions. — Patti Smith
Within that moment was trust, compassion, and our mutual sense of irony. He was carrying death within him and I was carrying life. We were both aware of that, I know. — Patti Smith