Patti Smith Quotes
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If I feel any marginalisation, it's because the things that concern me aren't so important to other people.
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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.
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I'm a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I'm happy.
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My mother and father had so many ups and downs and stayed with each other and helped each other. My mother took in ironing and she was a waitress. My father was working in the factory and he did people's tax returns.
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Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.
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I am not really certain how original my contribution to music is as I am obviously an amateur.
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As a citizen, hopefully I'm humanist. As an artist, I'm free.
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Nothing is a hobby - each discipline is its own world with its own high standards. Of course, every artist has 'minor works' that they do, but I don't think I have any 'minor disciplines.'
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I don't stay in one discipline because it's more lucrative than another. In fact, the most successful thing I ever did was 'Just Kids,' for which I had absolutely no expectations.
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I've always believed in having a sense of balance and stealth.
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My style says, 'Look at me, don't look at me.'
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Life is filled with holesJohnny's laying there in his sperm coffinThe angel looks down at him and says 'Oh, pretty boyCan't you show me nothing but surrender?
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We never threw a record together. Each record was done really seriously, as if our life depended on it.
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C'mon, I mean who didn't listen to 'The Who' in the 60s?
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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.
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I was so unhealthy as a child, and at least three or four times my parents were told to get ready, that I would not make it.
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I know what that tastes like, to be a rock-and-roll star - to have a limousine, to have girls screaming when they see you, girls trying to cut my hair, get a piece of me. But I don't walk around with a concept of myself as a rock-and-roll star, and certainly not as a musician, because I really can't play anything, except primitively.
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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.
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Nothing will stifle your human evolution more than fame and fortune.
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The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.
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I haven't had the most thrilling lifestyle. I was a pretty good dresser, but I would have a pretty boring 'Behind the Music.'
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My father was a dreamy fellow - he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games.
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Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about.
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I learned a lot from Arthur Rimbaud. People talk about how he wanted to be a seer and do that through the derangement of the senses. What they forget was that he also advocated, sternly and austerely, that one must be able to go through all that - and then articulate it.