Patti Smith Quotes

I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.

I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth

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

For me, personally, I think drugs are sacred and should be used for work. That's what I believe in. Drugs have a real shamanistic value. I can handle drugs. I've never had a problem.

Pissing in a river, watching it rise.

Often the simplest song is the hardest to write.

Good news doesn't necessarily have to be a positive thing. Bringing good news is imparting hope to one's fellow man.

These are the times, the times of our own, these are the shapes the world we formed.

You can't make a mistake when you improvise.

Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.

I'm not afraid of terrorism at all. I'm afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of global comradeship.

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

...my camera is my friend, and I take it everywhere.

You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.

We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.

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.

I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.

An artist wears his work in place of wounds.

People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything.

I'm a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I'm happy.

I'm okay with roaming around the world in my bunk for days on end. Maybe every third day I'll get a shower or stumble out at dawn and realize I'm in a field in Poland. I like that kind of life.

Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.

I know fashion is a material thing, but we live in a material world and I love clothes.

The only way I can lose my mind in bed is to destroy myself in a fantasy.

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.

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

Blessedness is within us all.

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

Lets 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.

Punk rock is just another word for freedom.

An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.

People need space to air out their thoughts, to have a sense of themselves - unfettered by anything.

It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to Him.

Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.

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

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

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.

I'm from South Jersey: The idea of eating a roll with olive oil and anchovies or some kind of sardine and drinking mint tea definitely comes from reading Paul Bowles.

Ultimately, we are not seeking others to bow to, but to reinforce our individual natures, to help us suffer our own choices, to guide us on our own particular journeys.

My introduction to photography and a lot of how I developed aesthetically was through '50s and early-'60s fashion magazines like Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.

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

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

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

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.

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.

The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times.

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

I wasn't thinking so much of music. I wasnt thinking so much of perfection or stardom or any of that stuff.

I love my little overgrown yard. And my house is wonderful. It's everything that I need.