Patti Smith Quotes

Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.

I wanted to remember the original energy; strip away all the glamour and limousines and tons of drugs. I wanted to get back to the revolutionary ideas, merging poetry and rhythm and rock and roll.

All I've ever wanted to do was create freedom.

The sea is greater than us - it has its rhythm, its art. It comes with our earliest memory, of respiration, breathing in and out.

I always wrote like rock 'n' roll. And I always listen to rock 'n' roll as poetry.

What is the impulse that drove to direct? To me, it seems so immense. Just having a rock 'n' roll band, or to go from the solitude of writing and to having to collaborate, is almost schizophrenic.

Writing is not some quiet, closet act.

One thing I like about getting older is things, your spectrum widens, your capacity for compassion widens.

I think its very important that we enjoy our life, that we get everything we can out of it.

Outside of society, if you're looking that's where you'll find me.

I think it's good for people to see the positive beauty that can flower from the deepest grieving.

I was quite an insomniac. I rarely slept as a child. Having God to talk to at night was nice.

I love being alive. I like being a human being.

I love to photograph the tools of one's trade: Duncan Grant's paintbrushes, the typewriter of Herman Hesse, or even my own guitar, a 1957 Fender Duo-Sonic.

It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn't want to be photographed. (On living with Robert Mapplethorpe)

One of my great goals when I first started taking photographs or showing them publicly is that people might want one for over their desk. That's my goal.

You can't work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe.

I personally am not interested in people trying to pigeonhole me.

I always wanted to be an artist, writer and poet since I was seven, and one has to live long enough to evolve as an artist and do one's finest work.

Well, I'm not one of those people who needs the limelight. If I'm performing, that's what I'm doing. If I'm not, I don't long for it. I don't need the approval of an audience, or applause.

John Coltrane, he talks to god. He starts playing his solo, he might play for 14 minutes. For 14 minutes, it seems like he's talking to god, but he always takes a hold of the melody.

I've lost many, many friends through natural causes, through alcohol, through drugs, through AIDS. And every time I lose a friend or a loved one, it reminds me how great life is.

I like energy. I like to feel it cracklin', I like sexual energy in a room, and I like tension.

Fate is like a secret friend that helps push you on into life.

I still don't want to be put in the feminist bag. I'm a humanist.

I wanted to see who this Yeats person was, and I said to my mother, 'I want a book by this person.' And she bought it for me, and a lot of it was over my head, but I had it.

There are so many great 19th-century photographers, and it's really my favorite period, but the amateurs did such beautiful work.

People don't realize we have these built-in seven-league boots. The body can go anywhere. It is physically capable of sustaining almost any kind of abuse, or any dream.

He found it was as easy to hurl beauty as anything else. (On Robert Mapplethorpe)

Spare the child and spoil the rod, I am not sellin' myself to god.

I'm a total failure at housewifery. I always have been, 'cause I daydream too much. If I start doing the dishes at one in the afternoon, I'll still be there at six in the evening.

I think it's really great that people share their work [on Myspace] and no one is paying for it. I think that's a very healthy thing and it's not a corporate thing.

My parents were very well read. They were both New Englanders, not highly educated, but they had a sophisticated... they were both very humanistic, and they were sophisticated readers.

I think masturbating is a really important function in art. People don't like to hear that kind of stuff, but it's true.

More than anything that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.

It's not that I have compromised or anything, but it's always been important to me to take good care of myself and be a good example. I'm not much a role model in terms of hair care, though.

It's no secret - I love detective fiction. One of the reasons I love being in London is because I like to watch all the shows on TV. I watch them all.

I'm pretty moral about what I do. If I didn't think I was worthy of doing something, I wouldn't do it. I ain't gonna waste a bunch of people's time.

New York is the thing that seduced me.

I don't think anything can prepare you for one's losses.

I'm very comfortable with being a female now but when I was a little kid I only wanted to be a boy. I didn't want to be a girl. I didn't feel like a man inside... being a boy was just cooler.

I don't think the area of Jerusalem should be part of a Jewish state; it belongs to all people, to Christians and Muslims and the Jewish people.

No one knows how powerful technology is.

My father hated rock and roll - hated it. My first real argument with my father was over the Rolling Stones. And he never, ever liked rock and roll. He just liked me.

My mother loved rock and roll. She loved high-energy music.

My father came a couple of times, but he always blamed his hearing loss on my loud amplifiers. So he didn't come anymore, but I had his support.

If I'm really working on something, writing or painting or really concentrating, I don't even think about brushing my hair.

My style of performance poetry came from the beatniks, Allen Ginsberg.

Sometimes [people] seem to think I came out of the womb, you know, cursing, with an electric guitar.

My mother had no end of tragedy in her life. She would make herself get up and take a deep breath and go out and do laundry. Hang up sheets.