Patti Smith Quotes

If your label won't let you have the cover you want or sing the songs you want, then leave!

With the death of Robert Mapplethorpe, I had lost my main collaborator in taking photographs. So I didn't know who to work with.

If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer.

Steven [Sebring] just fell in with my family life. He helped me wash the dishes and play with the kids. I could tell that he was a person who understood families.

I was so unhealthy as a child, and at least three or four times my parents were told to get ready, that I would not make it.

I have vague memories, like impressions on glass plates.

Grief isn't all tears.

Will you pretend you're my boyfriend?

I walk alone, assaulted it seems, by tears from heaven.

Everybody's got to reclaim these thingspoetry, rock'n'roll, political activismand it's got to be done over and over again. It's like eating: you can't say,'Oh, I ate yesterday'.You have to eat again.

We never had any children," he said ruefully. "Our work was our children.

Pollution is a necessary result of the inability of man to reform and transform waste.

You don't want to OD on improvisation.

I don't think," he insisted. "I feel.

We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another.

I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.

One day we’ll go in together, and the work will be ours.

Everything distracted me, but most of all myself.

Hey sister, you're just moving too fast, you're screwing up the quota.

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.

Christianity made us think there's one heaven.

Robert was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph.

What I wanted to do in rock'n'roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

I’m not much a role model in terms of hair care, though.

When I stopped performing for 16 years and lived in Michigan and was married and raising my children, I wrote about four or five books. I haven't published them.

Words are just rules and regulations to me.

Usually when I go to a place for the first time, unless there's something historical or spectacular that nature has to offer, the first thing I like to do is see what's on the minds of the people.

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.

I've lost lots of men in my life, besides my mother, which is a whole different loss.

The truth is, no matter how modest Steven [Sebring] is, he was obsessed with the outcome of the film [Dream of Life]. Every single frame was important to him.

I think the film [Dream of Life] is life-affirming.

I'm not really a nostalgic person.

I think that there is an air of experience and aesthetic sophistication that weaves in with the amateur aspects of the film [Dream of Life]; it gives the film a certain elegance.

I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written Just Kids had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer.

I hated the makeup. I hated all that pancake makeup. I didn't really like dressing for parts.

I could have a job as a teacher because I like talking in front of people.

Trust is everything between two artists, or between subject and artist. You have to have trust or nothing good will come out of it.

I've written a lot of prose. I just haven't published it.

I think its very important to not be afraid to experience joy in the middle of sorrow.

It was no hardship to me to spend long hours reading and writing.

The hand above turns those leaves of loves, all in all a timeless view. Each dream of life flung from paradise everlasting, ever new.

I know from an early age that I'm very comfortable in front of people. When I was a young girl, I'd love giving book reports.

The whole process of working with Steven [Sebring] and being filmed by him helped me psychologically to get my feet back on the ground.

We believe we will raise the sky, we got to fly over the land, over the sea. Fate unwinds and if we die, souls arise. God, do not seize me please.

[Steven Sebring] presence was also nice for my children, who, having just lost their father, quite naturally craved warm male attention. They gravitated to him right away.

If someone didn't want to be filmed, or my children said, "Don't film me anymore," [Steven Sebring] didn't try to sneak a shot or cajole them; he just respected their wishes.

I liked being on stage, I just didn't like the theatrical aspect of being in front of people.

I just like living in certain atmospheres. Or I just like people as they are.

I like photographing dresses in windows. I actually wore a lot of dresses in the '70s. I like them on other people now.

I always know that everything I do is the best I could do.