Patti Smith famous quotes

To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it.
-- Patti Smith

#Artist #What Matters #Want

I think some of that hopelessness of my generation got passed on to later generations - the sense of uselessness.
-- Patti Smith

#Thinking #Generations #Hopelessness

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
-- Patti Smith

#Inspirational #Letting Go #Fun

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.
-- Patti Smith

#People #Suffering #Helping

Life isn't some vertical or horizontal line -- you have your own interior world, and it's not neat.
-- Patti Smith

#World #Lines #Horizontal Lines

The bible is very resonant. It has everything, creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the bible and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan. Of course there are stories that are still relevant and inspiring; lessons that need to be taught over and over again. And they give people hope.
-- Patti Smith

#Betrayal #Sacrifice #Giving

We used to laugh at our small selves, saying that I was a bad girl trying to be good and that he was a good boy trying to be bad. Through the years these roles would reverse, then reverse again, until we came to accept our dual natures. We contained opposing principles, light and dark.
-- Patti Smith

#Girl #Dark #Boys

I can't judge how another person does their [music] work. Everyone has a choice and the music industry is much more open that it was when I was younger. Certain things are gone, others have developed, but everyone makes their choices. Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public. I don't feel it's my place to judge. I just look at things as a fan, I like or or I don't like it.
-- Patti Smith

#Judging #Choices #Doe

What will happen to us?" I asked. "There will always be us," he answered.
-- Patti Smith

I would always say to anyone, you make choices that are important to you. Don't allow yourself to be exploited by something as fleeting as fame and fortune. If you're presenting yourself in a way that important to you in communicating your vision, then so be it. No one should allow themselves to be exploited ever.
-- Patti Smith

#Choices #Vision #Important

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

#Sex #Gender #Drag

As much as I can, as much as I can afford, I keep ticket prices down. Rock 'n' roll was developed as the people's voice, the people's art, it was grassroots. I don't believe that the people should be estranged from their rock stars. They're not kings and queens - all rock stars are those who are able to give back a bit of culture to other people. It's people's heritage.
-- Patti Smith

#Art #Stars #Queens

My sunglasses are like my guitar.
-- Patti Smith

#Guitar #Sunglasses

I always thought my father [influenced me most] because he was so well read, I tried to model myself on him, but really as I go through life I realise it was my mother who gave me the most valuable instructions. I didn't understand or accept it at the time. She taught me to read and to pray - two things that have really stayed with me.
-- Patti Smith

#Mother #Father #Two

I don't like answering to other people's philosophies. I don't have any philosophy, I just believe in stuff. Either I believe in something or I don't. Like, I believe in the Rolling Stones but not in the Dave Clark Five. There's nothing philosophic about it. Whenever I'm linked with a movement, it pisses me off.
-- Patti Smith

#Philosophy #Believe #People

Light inspires me. I'm drawn to architecture, often graves, statues, trees - things usually that are quite still. I've been taking pictures continuously since 1995 until the end of Polaroid film. I'm taking very few pictures nowadays because I have very little film left, most of it expired.
-- Patti Smith

#Light #Tree #Inspire

New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city.
-- Patti Smith

#New York #Taken #Struggle

I think I work in two worlds. I'll always try to kick through a wall. I did that when I was younger and I still have my way of doing that.
-- Patti Smith

#Wall #Thinking #Two

Love is an angel disguised as lust.
-- Patti Smith

#Love #Angel #Lust

Even as a child, I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want to wear red lipstick.
-- Patti Smith

#Children #Red Lipstick #Want

To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom.
-- Patti Smith

#Successful #Rocks #Be Who You Are

For life is the best thing we have in this existence. And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within. This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions and, most simply put, the embodiment of love.
-- Patti Smith

#Children #Believe #Sea

If you over-plan, you close the door on possibilities.
-- Patti Smith

#Doors #Possibility #Plans

I didn't waste my time on things I didn't love.
-- Patti Smith

#Waste #Wasting My Time

Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you're magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.
-- Patti Smith

#Grief #People #Giving

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

#Book #Writing #Shelves

We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity.
-- Patti Smith

#Spiritual #Fall #Son

I've said this over and over, but I'll say it a million more times - I'm concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we're losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides.
-- Patti Smith

#Strong #Pesticides #Bees

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

#Writing #Pursuit #Awake

Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.
-- Patti Smith

#Remember #Poetry Is

No one expected me. Everything awaited me.
-- Patti Smith

#Expected

Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.
-- Patti Smith

#Time #Doe #Answers

I'm certain, as we filled down the great staircase, that I appeared the same as ever, a moping twelve years-old, all arms and legs. But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.
-- Patti Smith

#Art #Years #Twelve

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

#Children #Wonderful #Wanted

I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.
-- Patti Smith

#Beautiful #Book #World

In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.
-- Patti Smith

#Prayer #War #Humility

A writer, or any artist, can’t expect to be embraced by the people [but] you just keep doing your work - because you have to, because it’s your calling.
-- Patti Smith

#Artist #People #Calling

Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.
-- Patti Smith

#Freedom #Writing

If we keep our little flame alive, our first feeling of enthusiasm of who we are, without the influence or intervention of others, we will prevail.
-- Patti Smith

#Flames #Feelings #Alive

When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say." "Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise." "What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?" "You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another." In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life.
-- Patti Smith

#Mistake #Simple #Feet

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

#Loss #Mobility #Terrorism

I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.
-- Patti Smith

#Encouragement

We were walking toward the fountain, the epicenter of activity, when an older couple stopped and openly observed us. Robert enjoyed being noticed, and he affectionately squeezed my hand. "oh, take their picture," said the woman to her bemused husband, "I think they're artists." "Oh, go on," he shrugged. "They're just kids.
-- Patti Smith

#Couple #Husband #Kids

Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?
-- Patti Smith

#Heart #Youth

People have the power to redeem the work of fools.
-- Patti Smith

#People #Fool

My mission is to communicate, to wake people up, to give them my energy and accept theirs. We're all in it together, and I respond emotionally as a worker, a mother, an artist, and a human being with a voice. We all have a voice. We have the responsibility to exercise it, to use it.
-- Patti Smith

#Mother #Responsibility #Exercise

I wasn't attractive, I wasn't very verbal, I wasn't very smart in school. I wasn't anything that showed the world I was something special, but I had this tremendous hope all the time. I had this tremendous spirit that kept me going... I was a happy child, because I had this feeling that I was going to go beyond my body physical... I just knew it.
-- Patti Smith

#Children #Smart #School

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords.
-- Patti Smith

#Rocks #Enough #Chords

Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.
-- Patti Smith

#Two #World #Pockets

I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.
-- Patti Smith

#Thinking #States

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

#Grief #Grieving #Hands

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

#Music Business #Flawed #Appease

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

#Dream #Art #Reality

In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art. For whom? Are we animating God? Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal? To have one's work caged in art's great zoos - the Modern, the Met, the Louvre?
-- Patti Smith

#Art #Zoos #Talking

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

#Way #Morality #Contradiction

We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.
-- Patti Smith

#Black #Forests #World

The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.
-- Patti Smith

#Communication #Responsibility #Artist

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.
-- Patti Smith

#Writing #Artist #Drawing

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

#Art #Fall #Men

An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.
-- Patti Smith

#Artist #Competition

Yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. Now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods. Perhaps it was an awareness of time passing, the last summer of the decade. Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.
-- Patti Smith

#Summer #Growing Up #Moon