Patti Smith Quotes

I started thinking what could happen with my art and I realized that the biggest thing that could is that it winds up in a museum. It's like finding a rare animal and putting it in the zoo.

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.

If you over-plan, you close the door on possibilities.

As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.

The film [Dream of Life] is not really an amateur work, despite the fact that none of us have ever done anything like this before; aesthetically, none of us are amateurs.

An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.

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

All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.

I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.

A writer, or any artist, can’t expect to be embraced by the people [but] you just keep doing your work - because you have to, because it’s your calling.

When I'm on my own with my camera, taking these pictures, it feels as if I am in a room of my own, a self-contained world.

I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.

Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?

I think I work in two worlds. I'll always try to kick through a wall. I did that when I was younger and I still have my way of doing that.

I want to be around a really long time. I want to be a thorn in the side of everything as long as possible.

Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.

Everyone thinks of God as a man - you can't help it - Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man.

Should I pursue a path so twisted? Should I crawl defeated and gifted?

I started resenting how much art robs from life. I'd go to a party and I couldn't enjoy myself, even sexually. All I could think was how I was going to reinvent the experience into a piece of art.

I think some of that hopelessness of my generation got passed on to later generations - the sense of uselessness.

Your soul was like a network of spittle.

I think it's important for people to realize that we were all young, all naive, and also we had lived in a time that had magic.

Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about.

Good press, bad press, whatever, only means a lot to me if it's writ by somebody I respect, by somebody I like.

I didn't begin my life in 1975 with 'Horses.' I recorded 'Horses' in 1975, but was drawing in Paris in 1969.

The film [Dream of Life] doesn't hide anything, except maybe moments of sorrow or darkness that belonged to me.

I like my time on earth. And no matter what kind of cards I've been dealt, I'm happy to be there.

There's nothing cool about being self-destructive.

Rock & roll is like a painting. Can great paintings still be done? It depends on who holds the brush.

I know I'm a strong performer. I'm not an evolved musician.

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.

Hail brother, the distant thunder is nothing but hearts beating as one.

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.

I immersed myself in books and rock 'n' roll, the adolescent salvation.

I gave you a wrist watch, baby, and you wouldn't even give me the time of day.

I longed to read everything I possibly could, and the things I read in turn produced new yearnings.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.

When I was a kid, I loved Sherlock Holmes. I'm not interested in crimes. I'm interested in the mind of the detective and his process, which to me is a lot like the artist.

My father was a dreamy fellow - he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games.

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

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

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.

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.

Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography.

For Christmas every year, my mother used to give me those cheap little diaries that would tell your horoscope and provide a little blank slot for each day.

When I was working on the lyrics, I thought of all the lullabies we learn as children: "Away in the Manger," William Blake's lullabies. I realized that the key to lullabies is simplicity.

I've always had a desire to write something and capture people's imagination like Peter Pan had captured mine.

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.