Patti Quotes

It's not so easy writing about nothing. ~ Patti Smith

Artists, musicians, scientists - if you have any kind of visionary aptitude, it's often something that you don't have a choice in. You have to do it. ~ Patti Smith

We are wooed, then mocked, plagued like Amfortas, King of the Grail Knights, by a wound refusing heal. ~ Patti Smith

I don't believe people playing rock n' roll should have crowns. We're not kings and queens. Anybody can play it. ~ Patti Smith

And when we went home he was unnaturally quiet and looked at me as if he wanted to convey all he was feeling without words. ~ Patti Smith

Some things are not lost but sacrificed. ~ Patti Smith

I don't want to write a book; I don't want to go on T.V., because I stink at it. The only thing I have always been comfortable with is being in magazines. ~ Patti Hansen

I realize that people need something to believe in. ~ Patti Smith

The law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination. ~ Patti Smith

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

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

What I do know is that traditional gender roles are very real and flipping the norm is difficult for even the strongest, funniest, smartest men. ~ Patti Stanger

Their words faded into the darkness as if they were spoken and unspoken at the same time; as if they were important and yet not at all, as if they were two people talking or maybe just one.
Darkness, she understood later, easily confused the meaning of words, of skin touching skin. In their remaining summers together she tried to find that oneness again. When it was all over,
when youth ended and he chose Maisy, she understood the lesson from the dock that night: she could never again call her feelings of intimacy and oneness love. Nor would she be fooled again into believing that her love was returned, that a boy felt more for her than friendship. ~ Patti Callahan Henry

This great world of ours is the looking-glass in which we must gaze to come to know ourselves from the right slant. Michel de Montaigne ~ Patti Miller

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

There is a version of Alzheimer's which is early onset Alzheimer's. And it's - it's horrible, because people do get it in their 50s and 60s. And it's terrible. ~ Patti Davis

Patti proposes that I pray to accept whatever reality I'm in, staying alert for practical solutions rather than issuing orders in prayer. It takes discipline to stop beseeching the heavens for wheelbarrows of gold ~ Mary Karr

Will you take a picture? she said. I looked down at the bleak panorama and shook my head. How could I take a picture of nothing? ~ Patti Smith

In America, it stands out, because it's raw, it's big, it's emotional. My face is raw, big and emotional. It didn't work for the longest time. ~ Patti LuPone

I wish I could have a recurring role on 'Modern Family'. I think 'Modern Family' is the best comedy on television. It's extremely well written, extremely well acted and directed. ~ Patti LuPone

Commerce is abusive. It's very hobbling to always be saying, 'Please let me put this out, this thing I've worked on for years.' It's like a nasty parent saying, 'No! Now go to your room.' As publishing companies got bigger, you felt even less significant. ~ Patti Davis

I'm recognizable in certain circles, like girls know me, couples know me. But not all straight men know me. ~ Patti Stanger

I longed to read everything I possibly could, and the things I read in turn produced new yearnings. ~ Patti Smith

When I was young, all I wanted was to write books and be an artist. ~ Patti Smith

When you take your troubles to God, you may have them but they don't have you. ~ Patti LaBelle

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

I really feel concerned about young people within our present culture. Our present culture, we have to change. Change is inevitable and I wasn't raised in our present culture but it has great pressure that as a young person I never had. Material pressure, social pressure, visual pressure, how you look, and I just try to appeal to young people to think for themselves, to be their own person, and to ask questions and also be very attentive to our planet and our environment. ~ Patti Smith

There's always new stuff, that's for sure. ~ Patti Smith

It's not hard to find a date if you are Jewish in New York and Miami, but its hard in Texas. ~ Patti Stanger

As a child I thought that I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old? I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair. Now I am older than my love, my departed friends. Perhaps I will live so long that the New York Public Library will be obliged to hand over the walking stick of Virginia Woolf. I would cherish it for her, and the stones in her pocket. But I would also keep on living, refusing to surrender my pen. ~ Patti Smith

Edie Sedgwick (1943-1971)

I don't know how she did it. Fire
She was shaking all over. It took
her hours to put her make-up on.
But she did it. Even the false eye-lashes.
She ordered gin with triple
limes. Then a limosine. Everyone
knew she was the real heroine of
Blonde on Blonde.
oh it isn't fair
oh it isn't fair
how her ermine hair
turned men around
she was white on white
so blonde on blonde
and her long long legs
how I used to beg
to dance with her
but I never had
a chance with her
oh it isn't fair
how her ermine hair
used to swing so nice
used to cut the air
how all the men
used to dance with her
I never got a chance with her
though I really asked her
down deep
where you do
really dream
in the mind
reading love
I'd get
inside
her move
and we'd
turn around
and she'd
turn around
and turn the head
of everyone in town
her shaking shaking
glittering bones
second blonde child
after brian jones
oh it isn't fair

how I dreamed of her
and she slept
and she slept
forever
and I'll never dance
with her no never
she broke down
like a baby
like a baby girl
like a lady
with ermine hair
oh it isn't fair
and I'd like to see
her rise again
her white white bones
with baby bri ~ Patti Smith

I always hope that young people will think for themselves and also most importantly, understand that they should judge themselves on their own merit, their good deeds, however simple, to not judge themselves by what they have materially, by what other people think of them, through social media. ~ Patti Smith

I needed to run away in order to come home. ~ Patti Davis

I was born in 1946, so I was born on the tail end of when everything was deemed important. You made things to last. If you came from a poor family, there was only one can opener. ~ Patti Smith

I left Mephistopheles, the angels, and the remnants of our handmade world, saying, I choose Earth. ~ Patti Smith

We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones. ~ Patti Smith

I was a D student in high school and on the dean's list in college. ~ Patti Stanger

In the '60s, I used to love rock magazines; I'd cut out pictures of Bob Dylan and John Lennon. ~ Patti Smith

Christ was a man worthy to rebel against, for he was rebellion itself. ~ Patti Smith

One step into a living space and one can sense the centrality of work in a life. ~ Patti Smith

Firstly, though we have to clean this blood up off the tiles before it dries. It is far easier to clean the blood up while it's still wet."
"How do you know this stuff?" Grace said completely baffled.
"Dexter," Angela said shrugging and thinking that was as good an explanation as any. ~ Patti Roberts

My style of performance poetry came from the beatniks, Allen Ginsberg. ~ Patti Smith

Since childhood, it was my dream to go where all the poets and artists had been. Rimbaud, Artaud, Brancusi, Camus, Picasso, Bresson, Goddard, Jeanne Moreau, Juliette Greco, everybody - Paris for me was a Mecca. ~ Patti Smith

I know what that tastes like, to be a rock-and-roll star - to have a limousine, to have girls screaming when they see you, girls trying to cut my hair, get a piece of me. But I don't walk around with a concept of myself as a rock-and-roll star, and certainly not as a musician, because I really can't play anything, except primitively. ~ Patti Smith

I believe it's a miracle in life when you find people who care about and desire the same things you do, and creativity does that
brings those people together in one place. ~ Patti Callahan Henry

I had read it some time ago but was so completely immersed that I retained nothing. This has been an intermittent, lifelong enigma. Through early adolescence I sat and read for hours in a small grove of weed trees near the railroad track in Germantown. Like Gumby I would enter a book wholeheartedly and sometimes venture so deeply it was as if I were living within it. I finished many books in such a manner there, closing the covers ecstatically yet having no memory of the content by the time I returned home. This disturbed me but I kept this strange affliction to myself. I look at the covers of such books and their contents remain a mystery that I cannot bring myself to solve. Certain books I loved and lived within yet cannot remember. ~ Patti Smith

Why is it that we lose the things we love, and things cavalier cling to us and will be the measure of our worth after we're gone? ~ Patti Smith

Unearthing the truth was akin to creating it; something new and profound appeared where it hadn't been before. ~ Patti Callahan Henry

If you're alive, you're creative. ~ Patti Digh

Men like to provide for women and their families. It's in their DNA. I'm obviously no scientist, but I bet if you could hear a Y-chromosome talk, it would say, 'I want to provide and hunt.' When the woman is the primary breadwinner, it's going against nature. I'm not saying that it's bad or wrong, I'm just saying that it can feel off. ~ Patti Stanger

Patti walked right up and smacked him across the face. ~ Wendy Higgins

I can tell it all in song: pathos, gladness, love, joy, unhappiness. ~ Patti Page

I sang 'O Holy Night' with the Vatican orchestra, but also a Blake - a lullaby that William Blake wrote for the Christ child, and I set it to music, and the Vatican orchestra played the music. ~ Patti Smith

But there is one thing I do know, tucked away inside myself: hope unstitches you. Hope leaves you open and wounded. Without hope there is no fear, there is just living. ~ Patti Russon

Singers like her, Patti, Tina Turner, I revere them when I'm in their presence. ~ Deborah Cox

I think that Stevie Nicks is one of the greats. Steve Nicks and Grace Slick and Janis Joplin have the real rock voices, to me. ~ Patti LuPone

We're all getting plastic surgery. Come on, this is the game here, and HDTV exaggerates all the features. Yeah, I'm proud of it, because we're all doing it. Nobody's talking about it. ~ Patti Stanger

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

I need the wisdom, reasoning, and apologetics of C. S. Lewis, though some of his theological beliefs are different from mine. I need the preaching and charisma of Charles Spurgeon, though his view of baptism is different from mine. I need the resurrection vision of N. T. Wright and the theology of Jonathan Edwards, though their views on church government are different from mine. I need the passion and prophetic courage of Martin Luther King Jr., the cultural intelligence of Soong-Chan Rah, and the Confessions of St. Augustine, though their ethnicities are different from mine. I need the justice impulse and communal passion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, though his nationality is different from mine. I need the spiritual thirst and love drive of Brennan Manning and the prophetic wit of G. K. Chesterton, though both are Roman Catholics and I am a Protestant. I need the hymns and personal holiness of John and Charles Wesley, though some of their doctrinal distinctives are different from mine. I need the glorious weakness of Joni Eareckson Tada, the spirituality of Marva Dawn, the trusting perseverance of Elisabeth Elliot, the long-suffering spirit of Amy Carmichael, the transparency of Rebekah Lyons, the thankfulness of Ann Voskamp, the Kingdom vision of Amy Sherman, and the integrity of Patti Sauls, though their gender is different from mine. As St. Augustine reputedly said, "In nonessentials, liberty." To this we might add, "In nonessentials, open-minded receptivity." We Christians m ~ Scott Sauls

The right thing at the wrong time is never the right thing. ~ Patti Callahan Henry

Masks camouflage the faces of both good and evil.
Keeps hidden what is a truth and what is a lie. ~ Patti Roberts

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

All I do is stay in the kitchen and cook. I don't go there to party. ~ Patti LaBelle

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. ~ Patti Smith

- I know that you are concerned about the fate of the driver, he said, but it's out of our hands. He placed us in real jeopardy and in the end my concern was for you. - Oh, I wasn't afraid. - Yes, he said, that's why I was concerned. ~ Patti Smith

I closed my eyes as if to join the maiden as the droplets rearranged themselves, forming a pattern resembling an elongated island on the rim of an undisturbed blankness ~ Patti Smith

Girls are genius at getting through sexual abuse. Often the only way to get through is not to feel. And that is exactly what these fantasy worlds allow: They give girls a place to go so they don't have to be present in their violated bodies. Brilliant. ~ Patti Feuereisen

I understand that if you have never suffered a broken heart, then you have never really known what it is to truly be alive. And I understand that at that precise moment, when your heart breaks open, that all you want to do is lay down and die! Because you know that is the only way the pain is ever going to stop. ~ Patti Roberts

I don't fuck much with the past but I fuck plenty with the future. ~ Patti Smith

One thing I like about getting older is things, your spectrum widens, your capacity for compassion widens. ~ Patti Smith

I'm here right now and I want now to be the greatest time. ~ Patti Smith

People don't realize we have these built-in seven-league boots. The body can go anywhere. It is physically capable of sustaining almost any kind of abuse, or any dream. ~ Patti Smith

Blessedness is within us all
It lies upon the long scaffold
Patrols the vaporous hall
In our pursuits, though still, we venture forth
Hoping to grasp a handful of cloud and return
Unscathed, cloud in hand. We encounter
Space, fist, violin, or this - an immaculate face
Of a boy, somewhat wild, smiling in the sun.
He raises his hand, as if in carefree salute
Shading eyes that contain the thread of God.
Soon they will gather power, disenchantment
They will reflect enlightenment, agony
They will reveal the process of love
They will, in an hour alone, shed tears.
His mouth a circlet, a baptismal font
Opening wide as the lips of a damsel
Sounding the dizzying extremes.
The relativity of vein, the hip of unrest
For the sake of wing there is shoulder.
For symmetry there is blade.
He kneels, humiliates, he pierces her side.
Offering spleen to the wolves of the forest.
He races across the tiles, the human board.
Virility, coquetry all a game - well played.
Immersed in luminous disgrace, he lifts
As a slave, a nymph, a fabulous hood
As a rose, a thief of life, he will parade
Nude crowned with leaves, immortal.
He will sing of the body, his truth
He will increase the shining neck
Pluck airs toward our delight
Of the waning
The blossoming
The violent charade
But who will sing of him?
Who will sing of his blessedn ~ Patti Smith

I hate being confined, especially when it's for my own good. ~ Patti Smith

My father would never have said about any of his children you shouldn't express your opinions. But it's the way in which you express them. And for me to do - to speak at demonstrations and be as strident as I was now I see wasn't right. And it - there was a better way to do it. I could have written articles. ~ Patti Davis

Truth: Rape does indeed happen between girlfriend and boyfriend, husband and wife. Men who force their girlfriends or wives into having sex are committing rape, period. The laws are blurry, and in some countries marital rape is legal. But it still is rape. ~ Patti Feuereisen

I was horny, but I was innocent 'cause I was a real-late bloomer and not particularly attractive. In fact, homely. ~ Patti Smith

I was such a punk. ~ Patti Davis

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. ~ Patti Smith

I don't know why Alzheimer's was allowed to steal so much of my father before releasing him into the arms of death. But I know that at his last moment, when he opened his eyes, eyes that had not opened for many, many days, and looked at my mother, he showed us that neither disease nor death can conquer love. ~ Patti Davis

I'm sure there are a lot of things I should have done differently. But I don't think I've stepped on anyone along the way. If I have, I didn't mean to. ~ Patti Page

We are guided by roses, the scent of a page. ~ Patti Smith

Life Lesson 8: Change is always hard, but time softens the rough edges and eases the pull of the past. Eventually, we all climb out from under the bed, and even the most unfamiliar places begin to feel like home. ~ Patti Davis

The Angel of Death took the woman's frail hand. "Don't be afraid." she said. "Life is your past. Death, on the other hand, is your soul preparing for a new beginning. A brand new adventure, if you like." An excerpt from Paradox - Equilibrium. Book 4 in the Paradox series (release date 2013) ~ Patti Roberts

sun caught the edge of his belt buckle, projecting a flash that shimmered across the desert plain. A shrill whistle sounded, and as I stepped to the right I caught sight of his shadow spilling a whole other set of sophisms from an entirely different angle. - I been here before, haven't I? He just sat there staring out at the plain. Son of a bitch, I thought. He's ignoring me. - Hey, I said, I'm not the dead, not a shade passing. I'm flesh and blood here. He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started writing. - You got to at least look at me, I said. After all, it is my dream. I drew closer. Close enough to see what he was writing. He had his notebook open to a blank page and three words suddenly materialized. Nope, it's mine. - Well, I'll be damned, I murmured. I ~ Patti Smith

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

I was so used to doing art that my fingers were like albino spiders. So it was just natural for me to go to a typewriter and write poetry. ~ Patti Smith

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

I have a great track record, and I have never been sued. If I can't find someone for someone, I refer them out. I have an affiliate division of matchmakers all over the world that I work with. Men like certain types of women, and I can subcontract that out to foreign countries. ~ Patti Stanger

When I'm writing a book, I don't have any responsibility to anyone. I'm solitary. I'm writing on my own. I write by hand. And I write every day. I mean, it's part of my daily discipline. ~ Patti Smith

Everyone had something to offer and nobody appeared to have much money. Even the successful seemed to have just enough to live like extravagant bums. ~ Patti Smith

The death rate for people who play it safe and for those who live boldly is the same. ~ Patti Digh

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

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

Being a writer is like being in a relationship. If you're not 100% committed to your writing, you will fail to be the best that you can be. ~ Patti Roberts

I've always considered myself a writer. ~ Patti Smith

Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive. ~ Patti Smith

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

There's a part of me that wishes I could go out in T-shirt and jeans, 'cause I really love Patti Smith, Cat Power, girls who look so casual; that appeals to me 'cause I guess it's the opposite from what I do. But I can never let myself just do that - I always have to try and dress up and create something. ~ Bat For Lashes

It's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing. I'm not a musician. I never thought of performing in a rock n' roll band. I was just drawn in. It was like being called to duty - I was called to duty, and I did my duty as best as I could. ~ Patti Smith