88 Quotes & Sayings By 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

Everything comes down so pasteurizedeverything comes down 16 degreesthey say your amplifier is too loudturn your amplifier downare we high all alone on our kneesmemory is just hips that swinglike a clockthe past projects fantastic scenestic/toc tic/toc tic/tocfuck the clock! Patti Smith

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

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

A writer or any artist can’t expect to be embraced by the people. I've done records where it seemed like no one listened to them. You write poetry books that maybe 50 people read. And you just keep doing your work because you have to, because it’s your calling. But it’s beautiful to be embraced by the people. Some people have said to me, “Well, don’t you think that kind of success spoils one as an artist? If you’re a punk rocker, you don’t want to have a hit record…” And I say to them, “Fuck you! ” One does their work for the people. And the more people you can touch, the more wonderful it is. You don’t do your work and say, “I only want the cool people to read it.” You want everyone to be transported, or hopefully inspired by it. When I was really young, William Burroughs told me, “Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work. And make the right choices and protect your work. And if you can build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency. Patti Smith

And then I walked out, straight through the twilight, treading the beaten earth. There were no dust clouds, no signs of anyone, but I paid no mind. I was my own lucky hand of solitaire. The desert landscape unchanging: a long, unwinding scroll that I would one day amuse myself by filling. I'm going to remember everything and then I'm going to write it all down. An aria to a coat. A requiem for a café. That's what I was thinking, in my dream, looking down at my hands. Patti Smith

He wrote me a note to say we would create art together and we would make it, with or without the rest of the world. Patti Smith

I preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it. Patti Smith

I had no concept of what life at the Chelsea Hotel would be like when we checked in, but I soon realized it was a tremendous stroke of luck to end up there. We could have had a fair-seized railroad flat in the East Village for what we were paying, but to dwell in this eccentric and damned hotel provided a sense of security as well as a stellar education. The goodwill that surrounded us was proof that the Fates were conspiring to help their enthusiastic children. Patti Smith

Personally, I'm not much for symbolism. I never get it. Why can't things be just as they are? I never thought to psychoanalyze Seymour Glass or sought to break down "Desolation Row." I just wanted to get lost, become one with somewhere else, slip a wreath on a steeple top solely because I wished it. Patti Smith

I read and feel that same compulsion; the desire to possess what he has written, which can only be subdued by writing something myself. Patti Smith

I had one of those headaches. It kept pounding and got into that crazy realm where the guillotine seems like a good idea. Patti Smith

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

It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies (p. 171). Patti Smith

It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. Patti Smith

All I needed for the mind was to be led to new stations. All I needed for the heart was to visit a place of greater storms. Patti Smith

I may not know what is in your mind, but I know how your mind works. Patti Smith

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

Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all. Patti Smith

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

Is it time uninterrupted? Only the present comprehended? Are our thoughts nothing but passing trains, no stops, devoid of dimension, whizzing by massive posters with repeating images? Catching a fragment from a window seat, yet another fragment from the next identical frame? If I write in the present yet digress, is that still real time? Real time, I reasoned, cannot be divided into sections like numbers on the face of a clock. If I write about the past as I simultaneously dwell in the present, am I still in real time? Perhaps there is no past or future, only the perpetual present that contains this trinity of memory. Patti Smith

Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer. Patti Smith

I wanted to cry so bad, but my tears are inside. A blindfold keeps them there. I can’t see today. Patti, I don’t know anything. Patti Smith

Home is a desk. The amalgamation of a dream. Home is the cats, my books, and my work never done. All the lost things that may one day call to me, the faces of my children who will one day call to me. Maybe we can't draw flesh from reverie nor retrieve a dusty spur, but we can gather the dream itself and bring it back uniquely whole. Patti Smith

We want things we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment, sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother's voice. I want to see my children as children. Hands small, feet swift. Everything changes. Boy grown, father dead, daughter taller than me, weeping from a bad dream. Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don't go. Don't grow. Patti Smith

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

I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won’t, that we are different. As a child I thought 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

He recognizes voices within silence. (of Max Sebald) Patti Smith

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

Observing people taking in the work I had watched Robert create was an emotional experience. It had left our private world. It was what I had always wanted for him, but I felt a slight pang of possessiveness sharing it with others. Overriding that feeling was the joy of seeing Robert's face, suffused with confirmation, as he glimpsed the future he had so resolutely sought and had worked so hard to achieve. . Patti Smith

I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we thing we won't, that we are different. 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? . Patti Smith

I paced while he slept, ricocheting like a dove skidding the lonely confines of a Joseph Cornell box. Patti Smith

William Burroughs was simultaneously old and young. Part sheriff, part gumshoe. All writer. He had a medicine chest he kept locked, but if you were in pain he would open it. He did not like to see his loved ones suffer. If you were infirm he would feed you. He’d appear at your door with a fish wrapped in newsprint and fry it up. He was inaccessible to a girl but I loved him anyway. Patti Smith

And the eye became a body, the murky heart of a rose. The sinister shadow of an orchid. Or the indolent poppy balanced behind the ear of Baudelaire. Patti Smith

How wonderful it would be to meet an angel, I mused, but then I immediately realised I already had. Not an archangel like Saint Michael, but my human angel from Detroit, wearing an overcoat and no hat, with lank brown hair and eyes the coler of water. Patti Smith

How wonderful it would be to meet an angel, I mused, but then I immediately realised that I already had. Not an archangel like Saint Michael, but my human engel from Detroit, wearing an overcoat and no hat, with lank brown hair and eyes the coler of water. Patti Smith

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

A real prison breakfast" I said." Yeah, but we are free." And that summed it up. Patti Smith

He took twelve pictures that day. Within a few days he showed me the contact sheet. "This one has the magic, " he said. When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us. Patti Smith

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

In my way of thinking, anything is possible. Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all. Patti Smith

-What is nothing? I impetuously asked.- It is what you can see of your eyes without a mirror, was the answer. Patti Smith

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

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

It ain't so easy writing about nothin Patti Smith

Bringing good news is imparting hope to one's fellow man. The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times. Patti Smith

I have great respect for my parents. I got such beautiful things from both of them. It doesn't mean that we didn't have our rough times, but they were remarkable people who were open-minded, creative and hard-working, and had great senses of humor. Patti Smith

The thing is, it's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. There's nothing cool about being self-destructive. Patti Smith

It's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. There's nothing cool about being self-destructive. Patti Smith

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

For Christmas every year, my mother used to give me those cheap little diaries that would tell your horoscope and provide a little blank slot for each day. Patti Smith

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

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 work to Glenn Gould in the morning and go to sleep listening to Parsifal. Patti Smith

People wouldn't know this about me, but I adore ball gowns. I love their cut, their architecture and the thought of the hands of so many seamstresses working on them. Patti Smith

For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really great book, there's a new movie, there's a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life. Patti Smith

Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography. Patti Smith

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

My parents had three kids right after the Second World War, and we were all sort of sickly. Then I had a fourth sibling, with very serious asthma. The medical bills... So my parents always struggled. Patti Smith

What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant. Patti Smith

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

I get irritated with the world. I get irritated with politicians. I get very irritated with governments and with corporations, but in terms of imagination - my imagination is always fertile. I'm either thinking of my own things or constantly engaged by the things that other people do. Patti Smith

I come from a real working class background, and I didn't know anyone sophisticated - except I saw Edie Sedgewick once at the Art Museum in Philly. She had these black leotards and little black pumps and this big ermine cape and all these white dogs and black sunglasses and black eyes. She was classy! Patti Smith

The thing is that as you grow through life, the pursuit of art and the pursuit of new ideas, all these things keeps your mind elastic. Patti Smith

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

My mom loved rock n' roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around. He liked classical music and Duke Ellington. Patti Smith

My mom loved rock 'n roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around. Patti Smith

I'm a human being, I'm a friend, I'm a mom, I'm a writer, and I'm an artist. I do play electric guitar and all of that, but in the end, I'm just a person. Patti Smith

I'm not really a musician. I'm a performer, and I love rock n' roll. I've embraced rock n' roll because it encompasses all the things I'm interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock n' roll. Patti Smith

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

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. Patti Smith

What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. Patti Smith

When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep. Patti Smith

I didn't love Jim Morrison 'cause he was self-destructive. I loved him because of his work. Because of the way he merged poetry and rock-and-roll. Because he did something new. Patti Smith

You can't change the world you can't fix the whole environment. But you can recycle. You can turn the water off when you're brushing your teeth. You can do small things. Patti Smith

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

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

My dad got a job in a factory in Philadelphia, so I was raised in Germantown in a sort of a barracks for soldiers. They had housing for temporary housing. And then my parents saved money and bought a little house in South Jersey, built on a swamp. Patti Smith