Patti Smith Quotes
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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.
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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.
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The thing is that any sophistication I have, aesthetically, comes from 'Vogue' and 'Harper's Bazaar.' In the '60s, I never missed an issue, even if I had to steal to get them.
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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.
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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.
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The only thing I daydreamed about was being an opera singer. But I was so skinny and so pathetic that that sort of wasn't going to happen.
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If I've learned one thing in life, it's not to be so judgmental of other people.
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Why do people want to know exactly who I am? Am I a poet? Am I this or that? I've always made people wary. First they called me a rock poet. Then I was a poet that dabbled in rock. Then I was a rock person who dabbled in art.
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As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.
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First of all, anybody who has lasted 30 and went through the 60's is really a survivor.
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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.
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I remember the first club we played in San Francisco. There were a lot of people on motorcycles standing around outside, and I had trouble getting in. I didn't have any ID, and the guy at the door wouldn't let me in, even though I told him I was gonna be singing in there.
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Then I read Little Women, and of course, like a lot of really young girls, I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.
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I've always felt outside of things; I've always felt different.
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I was a sickly child, not very strong physically. I wasn't really the greatest in school. I didn't really excel in anything particularly. But I was happy with who I was.
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An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.
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My parents were very well read. They were both New Englanders, not highly educated, but they had a sophisticated... they were both very humanistic, and they were sophisticated readers.
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I have bigger concerns than what pop stars are doing. I'm more concerned about our environment, what industrialists are doing to it.
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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.
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The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times.
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I liked being on stage; I just didn't like the theatrical aspect of being in front of people.
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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.
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I know that some people have different personas for the different things they do, and I'm not criticizing that - maybe it's a good thing - but I'm the same old person, so I take everything in stride.
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I am still a very optimistic person. I continue to do work with joy.