Patti Smith Quotes
- All Quotes
-
In the '60s, I used to love rock magazines; I'd cut out pictures of Bob Dylan and John Lennon.
-
Everyone thinks of God as a man - you can't help it - Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man.
-
I have bigger concerns than what pop stars are doing. I'm more concerned about our environment, what industrialists are doing to it.
-
I am still a very optimistic person. I continue to do work with joy.
-
No, my work does not reflect my sexual preferences, it reflects the fact that I feel total freedom as an artist.
-
An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.
-
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.
-
I personally am not interested in people trying to pigeonhole me.
-
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.
-
As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.
-
I don't believe people playing rock n' roll should have crowns. We're not kings and queens. Anybody can play it.
-
New York is a great city. There is no question of that. It's such a diverse city. I've walked down the city and heard four or five different languages simultaneously. I think that's beautiful.
-
I was actually born in Chicago, and then when I was a toddler, my parents moved to Philadelphia.
-
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.
-
I was raised Jehovah's Witness. I was in Bible school at five or six years old, but I wouldn't say that we were a religious family.
-
I never thought I was gonna live to 30.
-
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.
-
Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public.
-
I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.
-
I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer.
-
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.
-
I've always felt outside of things; I've always felt different.
-
The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can't give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work.
-
I didn't know Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse, but I was affected by both of their deaths because I admired their work so much and mourned their youth and work they would never produce.