Patti Smith Quotes
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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'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 am still a very optimistic person. I continue to do work with joy.
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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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One of my great goals when I first started taking photographs or showing them publicly is that people might want one for over their desk. That's my goal.
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In the '60s, I used to love rock magazines; I'd cut out pictures of Bob Dylan and John Lennon.
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No, my work does not reflect my sexual preferences, it reflects the fact that I feel total freedom as an artist.
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Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public.
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As an artist, I used to think that my responsibility was to do good work. But I had to learn from the '70s on that being a public figure presents another aspect of responsibility.
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People have the power to redeem the work of fools.
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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.
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Rock n' roll is dream soup, what's your brand?
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I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.
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My father's mother was from Liverpool and she had this very beautiful English china. I only wanted to drink my cocoa out of my grandmother's cup and saucer.
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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!
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I personally am not interested in people trying to pigeonhole me.
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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.
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I was in musical comedy. And I did very well, but the memorization killed me. I'm not good at memorizing, and it gave me a lot of anxiety. I hated the makeup. I hated all that pancake makeup. I didn't really like dressing for parts.
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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.
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I want to be around a really long time. I want to be a thorn in the side of everything as long as possible.
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People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything.
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It's not that I have compromised or anything, but it's always been important to me to take good care of myself and be a good example. I'm not much a role model in terms of hair care, though.
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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.
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I work to Glenn Gould in the morning and go to sleep listening to Parsifal.