Patti Smith Quotes
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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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We never threw a record together. Each record was done really seriously, as if our life depended on 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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Nothing will stifle your human evolution more than fame and fortune.
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The issue of gender was never my biggest concern; my biggest concern was doing good work. When the feminist movement really got going, I wasn't an active part of it because I was more concerned with my own mental pursuits.
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Well, I'm not one of those people who needs the limelight. If I'm performing, that's what I'm doing. If I'm not, I don't long for it. I don't need the approval of an audience, or applause.
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I've always believed in having a sense of balance and stealth.
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My mom loved rock n' roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around. He liked classical music and Duke Ellington.
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C'mon, I mean who didn't listen to 'The Who' in the 60s?
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Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.
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I always wrote. 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.
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When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.
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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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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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What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and see what's wrong.
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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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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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The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.
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As a citizen, hopefully I'm humanist. As an artist, I'm free.
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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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Music television is all about the media-oriented version of what it is to be a rock star; it's not about what Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix were about - which included great images, sure, but they had spiritual and political and revolutionary content, too.
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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'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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When I was young, I was offered my first recording contract in 1971 and was offered quite a bit of money if I would change my character and be a '70s version of Cher.