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Patti Smith Quotes

We’ve collected the best Patti Smith Quotes. Use them as an inspiration.

1
My sunglasses are like my guitar.
Patti Smith
2
I come from a working-class family, and I’ve been working since I was 13, from babysitting to blueberry picking to factory work to bookstore work. And of course, being a mother and homemaker, the hardest work of all.
Patti Smith
3
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.
Patti Smith
4
It was always my belief that rock and roll belonged in the hands of the people, not rock stars.
Patti Smith
5
I’ve always felt outside of things; I’ve always felt different.
Patti Smith
6
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.
Patti Smith
7
My son and daughter lost their father quite young, so we keep him present with us. It’s just a daily practice.
Patti Smith
8
We tried not to age, but time had its rage.
Patti Smith
9
The thing I’ve always liked about performing is that I decide what I want to wear, whether I want to comb my hair.
Patti Smith
10
I remember the first club we played in San Francisco. There were a lot of people on motorcycles standing around outside, and I had trouble getting in. I didn’t have any ID, and the guy at the door wouldn’t let me in, even though I told him I was gonna be singing in there.
Patti Smith
11
‘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.
Patti Smith
12
It was always my belief that rock and roll belonged in the hands of the people, not rock stars.
Patti Smith
13
I have a lot of energy, and I like to work.
Patti Smith
14
I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world.
Patti Smith
15
My style says, ‘Look at me, don’t look at me.’
Patti Smith
16
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.
Patti Smith
17
We tried not to age, but time had its rage.
Patti Smith
18
My mother had no end of tragedy in her life. She would make herself get up and take a deep breath and go out and do laundry. Hang up sheets.
Patti Smith
19
Rock n’ roll is dream soup, what’s your brand?
Patti Smith
20
I like gettin’ old.
Patti Smith
21
I like really hot coffee, not too strong.
Patti Smith
22
I’m a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I’m happy.
Patti Smith
23
C’mon, I mean who didn’t listen to ‘The Who’ in the 60s?
Patti Smith
24
I was studying Francis of Assisi for quite some time, when Benedict was still the pope. And I was studying it for a song that I did for my last album, ‘Banga.’
Patti Smith
25
I am not really certain how original my contribution to music is as I am obviously an amateur.
Patti Smith
26
If your label won‘t let you have the cover you want or sing the songs you want, then leave!
Patti Smith
27
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.
Patti Smith
28
I’ve always believed in having a sense of balance and stealth.
Patti Smith
29
Americans just don’t know what being a movie star’s all about.
Patti Smith
30
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.
Patti Smith
31
When I was young, all I wanted was to write books and be an artist.
Patti Smith
32
The reason we did ‘Land of a Thousand Dances‘ and ‘Gloria’ on ‘Horses‘ was because I liked repetitious, three-chord rock songs, but I didn’t understand that I could write my own. I didn’t realize that you could use those chords a million times.
Patti Smith
33
I voted for Obama. I was very happy when he won. But Obama hasn’t really been able to effectively do anything that has made me… He hasn’t helped the environment. He didn’t close Guantanamo Bay. He went deeper into Afghanistan.
Patti Smith
34
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.
Patti Smith
35
I think I’m constantly in a state of adjustment.
Patti Smith
36
I’ve said this over and over, but I’ll say it a million more times – I’m concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we’re losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides.
Patti Smith
37
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.’
Patti Smith
38
A lot of children don’t have a developed aesthetic. I did. I made early choices in life, even about cloth; I liked flannel and not polyester.
Patti Smith
39
Since childhood, it was my dream to go where all the poets and artists had been. Rimbaud, Artaud, Brancusi, Camus, Picasso, Bresson, Goddard, Jeanne Moreau, Juliette Greco, everybody – Paris for me was a Mecca.
Patti Smith
40
The cult of celebrity in the ’60s and ’70s was really more reserved for movie stars or high socialites. Paparazzi didn’t care about Janis Joplin.
Patti Smith
41
My parents were very well read. They were both New Englanders, not highly educated, but they had a sophisticated… they were both very humanistic, and they were sophisticated readers.
Patti Smith
42
My mother had no end of tragedy in her life. She would make herself get up and take a deep breath and go out and do laundry. Hang up sheets.
Patti Smith
43
I like really hot coffee, not too strong.
Patti Smith
44
There is hardly a place in New York that you can’t walk a block and a half and get a cup of coffee. Believe me, I’ve been all over the world. There’s no place like that but New York City.
Patti Smith
45
If you feel good about who you are inside, it will radiate.
Patti Smith
46
I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.
Patti Smith
47
I’m not part of any movement; I don’t like being fettered.
Patti Smith
48
Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
Patti Smith
49
Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book.
Patti Smith
50
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.
Patti Smith
51
I had a penchant myself for doing several things at once. I wanted to draw, write, speak.
Patti Smith
52
I have bigger concerns than what pop stars are doing. I’m more concerned about our environment, what industrialists are doing to it.
Patti Smith
53
My style says, ‘Look at me, don’t look at me.’
Patti Smith
54
I’d just make sure with anything I say I know what I’m talking about.
Patti Smith
55
We didn’t have the phrase ‘style icon‘ when I was young, but I have to say, I really copied Bob Dylan when I was younger: a little bit of Bob Dylan or a lot of Bob Dylan and the French symbolist poets – I liked how they dressed – and Catholic school boys.
Patti Smith
56
You can’t change the world; you can’t fix the whole environment. But you can recycle. You can turn the water off when you’re brushing your teeth. You can do small things.
Patti Smith
57
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.
Patti Smith
58
I’m not afraid of terrorism at all. I’m afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of global comradeship.
Patti Smith
59
You can’t carve up the world. It’s not a pie.
Patti Smith
60
To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It’s freedom.
Patti Smith
61
I come from a real working class background, and I didn’t know anyone sophisticated – except I saw Edie Sedgewick once at the Art Museum in Philly. She had these black leotards and little black pumps and this big ermine cape and all these white dogs and black sunglasses and black eyes. She was classy!
Patti Smith
62
Maybe I’ll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.
Patti Smith
63
An artist wears his work in place of wounds.
Patti Smith
64
As far as I’m concerned, being any gender is a drag.
Patti Smith
65
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.
Patti Smith
66
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.
Patti Smith
67
I was quite an insomniac. I rarely slept as a child. Having God to talk to at night was nice.
Patti Smith
68
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.
Patti Smith
69
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.
Patti Smith
70
As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.
Patti Smith
71
Robert Mapplethorpe, I met in 1967. He was a student at Pratt, though even as a student a fully formed artist. We went through many things in our life together. He became my loved one, then my best friend.
Patti Smith
72
I remember when the Bic pen was controversial. They came from France. They were cheap, and when one was out of ink, you threw it away; you didn’t dip it into more ink.
Patti Smith
73
It’s no secret – I love detective fiction. One of the reasons I love being in London is because I like to watch all the shows on TV. I watch them all. I like ‘Detective Frost.’
Patti Smith
74
I’m an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.
Patti Smith
75
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.
Patti Smith
76
I was born in 1946, so I was born on the tail end of when everything was deemed important. You made things to last. If you came from a poor family, there was only one can opener.
Patti Smith
77
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.
Patti Smith
78
When I was a young girl, I’d love giving book reports.
Patti Smith
79
I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
Patti Smith
80
People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything.
Patti Smith
81
As I go through life, I can see why my mother directed me that way, or why my father counseled me in that way. But some things you’re open to when you’re young, and some things you need to find out for yourself. I think that that’s pretty universal.
Patti Smith
82
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.
Patti Smith
83
I don’t think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I’m concerned about are at the top of other people’s agendas – not right now, when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change.
Patti Smith
84
What I wanted to do in rock ‘n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.
Patti Smith
85
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.
Patti Smith
86
I loved being a rock and roll star, but it wasn’t what I wanted in life.
Patti Smith
87
I didn’t begin my life in 1975 with ‘Horses.’ I recorded ‘Horses’ in 1975, but was drawing in Paris in 1969.
Patti Smith
88
You’re not a rock n’ roll person four hours a day or even when you’re on stage. It’s become the rhythm of your whole life.
Patti Smith
89
My mom loved rock ‘n roll. My father hated it. We couldn’t play it when he was around.
Patti Smith
90
I didn’t love Jim Morrison ’cause he was self-destructive. I loved him because of his work. Because of the way he merged poetry and rock-and-roll. Because he did something new.
Patti Smith
91
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.
Patti Smith
92
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.
Patti Smith
93
You’re not a rock n’ roll person four hours a day or even when you’re on stage. It’s become the rhythm of your whole life.
Patti Smith
94
Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public.
Patti Smith
95
One of my great goals when I first started taking photographs or showing them publicly is that people might want one for over their desk. That’s my goal.
Patti Smith
96
I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
Patti Smith
97
Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.
Patti Smith
98
I was in musical comedy. And I did very well, but the memorization killed me. I’m not good at memorizing, and it gave me a lot of anxiety. I hated the makeup. I hated all that pancake makeup. I didn’t really like dressing for parts.
Patti Smith
99
My sunglasses are like my guitar.
Patti Smith
100
I don’t think the area of Jerusalem should be part of a Jewish state; it belongs to all people, to Christians and Muslims and the Jewish people.
Patti Smith
101
There are so many great 19th-century photographers, and it’s really my favorite period, but the amateurs did such beautiful work.
Patti Smith
102
I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world.
Patti Smith
103
I remember when the Bic pen was controversial. They came from France. They were cheap, and when one was out of ink, you threw it away; you didn’t dip it into more ink.
Patti Smith
104
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.
Patti Smith
105
My mother answers all my fan mail.
Patti Smith
106
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.
Patti Smith
107
An artist wears his work in place of wounds.
Patti Smith
108
When I stopped performing for 16 years and lived in Michigan and was married and raising my children, I wrote about four or five books. I haven‘t published them. I just haven’t gotten around to it for several reasons.
Patti Smith
109
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.
Patti Smith
110
If you feel good about who you are inside, it will radiate.
Patti Smith
111
If I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s not to be so judgmental of other people.
Patti Smith
112
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.
Patti Smith
113
I knew William Burroughs really well, and I was always star struck being around him. I adored him.
Patti Smith
114
Nothing will stifle your human evolution more than fame and fortune.
Patti Smith
115
Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
Patti Smith
116
Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn’t serve anyone, and it’s painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you’re magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.
Patti Smith
117
Ornette Coleman is a real musician. He takes all of the things he’s thinking about in the world – which is a whole universe upon universe – and translates this into music.
Patti Smith
118
I wanted to go to Portland because it’s a really good book town.
Patti Smith
119
I’m not saying I wasn’t flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.
Patti Smith
120
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.
Patti Smith
121
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.
Patti Smith
122
I’ve lost lots of men in my life, besides my mother, which is a whole different loss.
Patti Smith
123
As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.
Patti Smith
124
Truthfully, I don’t really think of myself as a photographer. I don’t have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who’s spent their life devoted to photography.
Patti Smith
125
My father was a dreamy fellow – he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games.
Patti Smith
126
My father’s mother was from Liverpool and she had this very beautiful English china. I only wanted to drink my cocoa out of my grandmother‘s cup and saucer.
Patti Smith
127
If I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s not to be so judgmental of other people.
Patti Smith
128
What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn’t have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that’s startling or is so poignant.
Patti Smith
129
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.
Patti Smith
130
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.
Patti Smith
131
I was a lower middle-class kid. My family had no money. There was no room in our small house where there were already four kids, including myself, living.
Patti Smith