Patti Smith Quotes

I don't feel that censorship keeps me from doing the work, though. I'm my bigger censor.

When you do controversial work, you're going to upset a certain amount of people.

Toyland, toyland . . . once you pass its portals you may never return again.

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

Sometimes I get lost in watching a film. The sorrow, or the frustration, is when it doesn't happen for a long time.

Talking to god and coming back because that's what we have to do. That's your responsibility as a director, as an artist, as a performer. Your responsibility is back again to your people.

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.

A lullaby should be timeless because it's a timeless concept - the birth of the child.

Sometimes you have to abandon your own children for other children.

I didn't have any career design. I was not thinking about publishing or doing a record. I was just working. I was evolving. I wanted to really comprehend what I was doing before stepping too far out.

I had a handful of records, but when I was 11 years old, I liked Puccini as much as Little Richard. They both made sense to me.

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

Committing great work does not necessarily feed you.

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

The film [Dream of Life] is the way it is because it was the rhythm of my life, and also because the director and the editor are both gifted and both fine human beings.

I was raised in rural south Jersey, and there was no culture there. There was a small library, and that was it. There was nothing else.

Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.

Arthur Conan Doyle had to be Sherlock Holmes in order to envision how Sherlock Holmes would unravel a mystery. He had to be in Sherlock's situations. As a writer, you have to be of two minds.

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

Social media could be very strong in terms of bringing people together but it also takes up so much of people's time that I wonder if we've lost the ability to daydream.

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

The film [Dream of Life] looks at a time in my life.

People like beauty and purity. They pretend that's what it's all about.

I just know that young people suffer, and I also know music is one of the things that help you get through - music and friends.

For I desired, as Youth does, to be taken by the hand and hurled into the world.

The things I thought would happen didn't. Things I never anticipated unfolded.

I had gone to Paris to immerse myself in painting and I came back wholly involved in words and rhythms.

I realize that people need something to believe in.

I had this idea that the coolest thing that could happen to you was talking with God.

I was real religious when I was young. I wanted to be a missionary.

I feel about politics the same way I do about religion: I find the best I can from different things.

I'm an artist. I'm interested in how art gets made.

Angel looks down at him and says, “Oh, pretty boy, Can't you show me nothing but surrender?

Hung-up women can't produce anything but mediocre art, and there ain't no room for mediocre art.

I don't think people should do biopics of living people. I'm totally opposed to that.

After writing all day I go for a walk and see a piece of architecture i want to photograph and i have to take a picture and later a poem comes in my mind.

I'm not really a musician. I'm a performer and I love rock 'n' roll.

I don't wear makeup. I can't stand nothin' on my face. It's a phobia. It's not a platform.

I've never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they're not going to be great writers.

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 only parts I like out of any of those women books is the dirty parts. But I don't think their dirty parts are any good, really.

I didn't waste my time on things I didn't love.

I was always trying to pick guys up. I'd ask guys out and stuff like that. I had no pride. I was the biggest lurch at dances, waiting for the ladies' choice. I'd lunge at my prey like a baby wolf.

I got over the loss of his desk and chair, but never the desire to produce a string of words more precious than the emeralds of Cortés.

I was a lower middle-class kid. My family had no money. There was no room in our small house where there were already four kids, including myself, living.

I'd never had people drive me around, and then all of a sudden, if a car didn't come, I'd say, "Where's my car?"

I hate to be enclosed. I don't like bathroom doors - I don't shut them. In fact, in my house, I have no doors.

I always wear the same thing onstage.

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.

Obviously, I'm not homeless. I'm not an old alcoholic. I'm not jumping trains. I just like to live in a certain way.