Patti Smith Quotes

Patti Smith shares sly musings on art, religion, and freedom.

43 quotes

1. Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about.

2. An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.

3. Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.

4. Christianity made us think there's one heaven.

5. Everyone thinks of God as a man - you can't help it - Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man.

6. I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.

7. I can't say I was a Rasta but I went through a period when I was studying all aspects of Rastafarianism, including smoking a lot of pot while reading the Bible!

8. I have a daughter who's 11 years old. Maybe she'll grow up independent and really really heavy and become a movie star and she'll play me in my life story.

9. I like gettin' old

10. I look at these kids, you know, and I could be their mother, their mistress, their older woman. Some of the kids at the concerts are 15.

11. I only planned it out till I was 28. I figured at 28, the black dress, the gutter in Paris, I had it - like a B movie of Piaf.

12. 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.

13. Let's just say that I think any person who aspires, presumes, or feels the calling to be an artist has a built-in sense of duty.

14. Mohammed personally mapped out seven heavens. If he got to seven, you know there's more.

15. No, my work does not reflect my sexual preferences, it reflects the fact that I feel total freedom as an artist

16. Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.

17. 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.

18. Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

19. 'Gloria (In Excelsis Deo)': Jesus died For somebody's sins But not mine

20. 'Rock N Roll Nigger': Look around you, all around you Riding on a copper wave Do you like the world around you? Are you ready to behave?

21. 'People Have the Power': People have the power To redeem the work of fools Upon the meek the graces shower It's decreed the people rule

22. 'Land': Life is filled with holes Johnny's laying there in his sperm coffin The angel looks down at him and says 'Oh, pretty boy Can't you show me nothing but surrender?

23. 'Babelogue': He spared the child and spoiled the rod I have not sold myself to God!

24. She is a soldier. She will not be defeated.

25. Lets just say that I think any person who aspires, presumes, or feels the calling to be an artist has a built-in sense of duty.

26. I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife.

27. As a citizen, hopefully I'm humanist. As an artist, I'm free.

28. Sometimes [people] seem to think I came out of the womb, you know, cursing, with an electric guitar.

29. Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?

30. Ultimately, we are not seeking others to bow to, but to reinforce our individual natures, to help us suffer our own choices, to guide us on our own particular journeys.

31. If I'm taking a picture of Brancusi's grave, I know that there's something of him, of his mortal remains, beneath my feet, and there's something beautiful about that.

32. I'm certain, as we filled down the great staircase, that I appeared the same as ever, a moping twelve years-old, all arms and legs. But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

33. In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.

34. New York is the thing that seduced me. New York is the thing that formed me. New York is the thing that deformed me. New York is the thing that perverted me. New York is the thing that converted me. And New York is the thing that I love too.

35. I don't wanna be equal with anybody. I wanna be above equal. I don't think most people are equal to me. I'd like to communicate with everybody; I'd like to do something universal, I'd like to have the hit record of the world. But that's not the same as being equal.

36. I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.

37. I'm okay with roaming around the world in my bunk for days on end. Maybe every third day I'll get a shower or stumble out at dawn and realize I'm in a field in Poland. I like that kind of life.

38. I don't think," he insisted. "I feel.

39. What I wanted in life always was to write something as good as 'Pinocchio.' I wanted to write. I wanted to evolve. I wanted to grow.

40. I'm not really a musician. I'm a performer and I love rock 'n' roll.

41. I always wanted to be an artist, writer and poet since I was seven, and one has to live long enough to evolve as an artist and do one's finest work.

42. A day doesn't go by where I don't create something.

43. Good press, bad press, whatever, only means a lot to me if it's writ by somebody I respect, by somebody I like.