Patti Smith Quotes

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

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

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

I am not really certain how original my contribution to music is as I am obviously an amateur.

I've always looked the same. Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that's what I wanted to wear everyday.

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.

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.

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

C'mon, I mean who didn't listen to 'The Who' in the 60s?

Sure I destroyed my guitar at every concert, but it was okay, because I'd always get a shiny new one the very next day.

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

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

An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.

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

Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.

Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.

Christianity made us think there's one heaven.

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

First of all, anybody who has lasted 30 and went through the 60's is really a survivor.

Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.

I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.

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.

I have a daughter who's 11 years old. Maybe she'll grow up independent and really really heavy and become a movie star and she'll play me in my life story.

I like gettin' old.

I never thought I was gonna live to 30.

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

I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.

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

In fact, I thought my calling was to be a painter.

In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen - a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children - I learned a lot.

Let's just say that I think any person who aspires, presumes, or feels the calling to be an artist has a built-in sense of duty.

Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.

Mohammed personally mapped out seven heavens. If he got to seven, you know there's more.

My mother answers all my fan mail.

My sunglasses are like my guitar.

No, my work does not reflect my sexual preferences, it reflects the fact that I feel total freedom as an artist.

Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.

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

Then I read Little Women, and of course, like a lot of really young girls, I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.

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.

Rock n' roll is dream soup, what's your brand?

People have the power to redeem the work of fools.

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.

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

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.

I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf.

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

I had to learn, really, how to rein in my energies and discipline myself. And I found it very very useful. I rebelled against it at first, but it's a good thing to have.

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 wanted to go to Portland because it's a really good book town.

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

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. I just haven't gotten around to it for several reasons.

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.

A lot of children don't have a developed aesthetic. I did. I made early choices in life, even about cloth; I liked flannel and not polyester.

My father's mother was from Liverpool and she had this very beautiful English china. I only wanted to drink my cocoa out of my grandmother's cup and saucer.

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.

I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world.

What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and see what's wrong.

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.

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.

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.

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

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission.

I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist.

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