Patti Smith Quotes
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Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
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I don't think public life in and of itself can destroy you. I think it's the way people react to it, and some people are more sturdy than others... I don't think any one faction can be blamed for a person's self destruction - a certain amount of that has to be innate.
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People came at me with all sorts of offers, wanting to make me into a hard-core Cher. I had no desire for any amount of money to be reformed for someone's vision, because in the end, that's what you got: your clay in someone else's hands.
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I'm not a very analytical person.
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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.
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'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.
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Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that's what I wanted to wear everyday.
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Sure I destroyed my guitar at every concert, but it was okay, because I'd always get a shiny new one the very next day.
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I never thought I was gonna live to 30.
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It was always my belief that rock and roll belonged in the hands of the people, not rock stars.
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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.
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I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist.
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My father was a dreamy fellow - he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games.
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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.
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I like really hot coffee, not too strong.
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In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen - a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children - I learned a lot.
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Some of us are born rebellious. Like Jean Genet or Arthur Rimbaud, I roam these mean streets like a villain, a vagabond, an outcast, scavenging for the scraps that may perchance plummet off humanity's dirty plates, though often sometimes taking a cab to a restaurant is more convenient.
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I get up, and if I feel out of sorts, I'll do some exercises, I'll feed my cat, then I go get my coffee, take a notebook, and write for a couple of hours.
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I didn't begin my life in 1975 with 'Horses.' I recorded 'Horses' in 1975, but was drawing in Paris in 1969.
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I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf.
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My style says, 'Look at me, don't look at me.'
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There are so many great 19th-century photographers, and it's really my favorite period, but the amateurs did such beautiful work.
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I know I'm a strong performer. I'm not an evolved musician.
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I had a handful of records, but when I was 11 years old, I liked Puccini as much as Little Richard. They both made sense to me.