Patti Smith 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 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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will you pretend you're my boyfriend? ~ Patti Smith

Writing is not some quiet, closet act. ~ Patti Smith

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. ~ Patti Smith

the incisive observational powers of a female surgeon cutting out her own heart. ~ Patti Smith

There were days, rainy gray days, when the streets of Brooklyn were worthy of a photograph, every window the lens of a Leica, the view grainy and immoble. We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed. We lay in each other's arms, still awkward but happy, exchanging breathless kisses into sleep. ~ Patti Smith

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. ~ Patti Smith

I think masturbating is a really important function in art. People don't like to hear that kind of stuff, but it's true. ~ Patti Smith

I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then nothing could tear us apart. ~ Patti Smith

Ed Friedman: [talking about Patti Smith] One time she told me, "Allen Ginsberg thought I was a cute boy and he tried to pick me up, so I said, "LOOK AT THE TITS, ALLEN! NOTICE THE TITS! ~ Legs McNeil

In the beginning was real time. A woman enters a garden that is bursting with color. She has no memory, only a burgeoning curiosity. She approaches the man. He is not curious. He stands before a tree. ~ Patti Smith

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

I voted for Obama. I was very happy when he won. But Obama hasn't really been able to effectively do anything that has made me ... He hasn't helped the environment. He didn't close Guantanamo Bay. He went deeper into Afghanistan. ~ Patti Smith

He found it was as easy to hurl beauty as anything else. (On Robert Mapplethorpe) ~ Patti Smith

each possessed something the other wanted and, in that way, complemented the other. ~ Patti Smith

Not all dreams need to be realized ... Fred finally achieved his pilot's license but couldn't afford to fly a plane. I wrote incessantly but published nothing. Through it all we held fast to the concept of the clock with no hands. Tasks were completed, sump pumps manned, sandbags piled, trees planted, shirts ironed, hems stitched, and yet we reserved the right to ignore the hands that kept on turning. Looking back, long after his death, our way of living seems a miracle, one that could only be achieved by the silent synchronization of the jewels and gears of a common mind. ~ Patti Smith

Your work, coming from a fluid source, can be traced to the naked song of your youth. You spoke then of holding hands with God. Remember, through everything, you have always held that hand, grip it hard, Robert, and don't let go.

(letter to Robert Mapplethorpe, 1970) ~ Patti Smith

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

Pollution is a necessary result of the inability of man to reform and transform waste. ~ Patti Smith

That whole thing about masturbating. Most girls, I guess nobody has to tell them, they just figure it out. I had to be told. Some girl actually had to show me a hairbrush and demonstrate exactly what to do. I just never figured that stuff out naturally. ~ Patti Smith

I got some coffee and stood looking at the sky. ~ Patti Smith

If I feel any marginalisation, it's because the things that concern me aren't so important to other people. ~ Patti Smith

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

We made quite a crew, all talking at once, contradicting and sparring, a cacophony of affectionate arguing. ~ Patti Smith Just Kids

I felt alien my whole life, but I didn't feel alien because of my gender. Other people made me aware of my gender. ~ Patti Smith

The air was heavy with unstable chemicals, mold, and the earthy stench of hashish. The fat of candles burned, great tears of wax spilling onto the sidewalk. ~ Patti Smith

I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,
that Joplin had the last drunken throat,
that Morrison had the last enlightened mind. ~ Patti Smith

Nobody sees as we do, Patti he said again. Whenever he said things like that, for a magical space of time, it was as if we were the only two people in the world. ~ Patti Smith

I have vague memories, like impressions on glass plates ... ~ Patti Smith

If the postman is saying hello to you, then I feel like, wow, thats something special. ~ Patti Smith

Blessedness is within us all. ~ Patti Smith

Now, I can tell you about some women writers who truly are fantastic. One is Anna Kavan. She writes stories like I approach "Land of a Thousand Dances": she's caught in a haze and then a light, a little teeny light, come through. It could be a leopard, that light, or it could be a spot of blood. It could be anything. But she hooks onto that and spirals out. And she does it within the accessible rhythms of plot, and that's really exciting. She's not hung up with being a woman, she just keeps extending herself, keeps telescoping language and plot.

Another great woman writer is Iris Sarazan, who wrote The Runaway. She considered herself a mare, a wild runaway. She was a really intelligent girl stuck in all these convents with a hungry mind. I identify with her 'cause of her hunger to go beyond herself. She wound up in prison, but she escaped and wrote some great books before kicking off. Her books aren't page after page of her beating her breast about how shitty she's been treated, they're books about her exciting telescoping plans of escape. Rhythm, great wild rhythm....

The French poet, Rimbaud, predicted that the next great crop of writers would be women. He was the first guy who ever made a big women's liberation statement, saying that when women release themselves from the long servitude of men they're really gonna gush. New rhythms, new poetries, new horrors, new beauties. And I believe in that completely. (1976 Penthouse interview) ~ Patti Smith

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. ~ Patti Smith

I think its very important that we enjoy our life, that we get everything we can out of it. ~ Patti Smith

Just come back, I was thinking. You've been gone long enough. Just come back. I will stop traveling; I will wash your clothes. ~ Patti Smith

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

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

I'm absolutely obsessed with The Jesus And Mary Chain and Patti Smith, but I'm a massive pop fan. I love pop culture, It's a total reflection of the zeitgeist. ~ Siobhan Fahey

Well, I'm not one of those people who needs the limelight. If I'm performing, that's what I'm doing. If I'm not, I don't long for it. I don't need the approval of an audience, or applause. ~ Patti Smith

Friendship makes thieves of us all ~ Patti Smith

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

I was thinking about what a magical portal this lobby was when the heavy glass door opened as if swept by wind and a familiar figure in a black and scarlet cape entered. It was Salvador Dali. He looked around the lobby nervously, and then, seeing my crow, smiled. He placed his elegant, bony hand atop my head and said: You are like a crow, a gothic crow. ~ Patti Smith