Top 151 Patti Smith Quotes

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.

I was quite an insomniac. I rarely slept as a child. Having God to talk to at night was nice.

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.

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

I knew William Burroughs really well, and I was always star struck being around him. I adored him.

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.

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.

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.

Good news doesn’t necessarily have to be a positive thing. Bringing good news is imparting hope to one’s fellow man.

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.

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.

As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.

My siblings were a bit younger than me, and I was always entertaining them and making up stories.

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.

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.

I work to Glenn Gould in the morning and go to sleep listening to Parsifal.

My parents had three kids right after the Second World War, and we were all sort of sickly. Then I had a fourth sibling, with very serious asthma. The medical bills… So my parents always struggled.

I’ve always looked the same. 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.

I am not really certain how original my contribution to music is as I am obviously an amateur.

Hopefully if you create something fine, people will relate to it, so you’re communicating with people, and you’re not in a void. On the other hand, because you’re always creating and transforming, art always separates you – always.

An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn’t know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.

In 1974, when I started working with the material that became ‘Horses,’ a lot of our great voices had died. We’d lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and people like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

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.

I personally am not interested in people trying to pigeonhole me.

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.

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.

I sang ‘O Holy Night’ with the Vatican orchestra, but also a Blake – a lullaby that William Blake wrote for the Christ child, and I set it to music, and the Vatican orchestra played the music.

It’s not that I have compromised or anything, but it’s always been important to me to take good care of myself and be a good example. I’m not much a role model in terms of hair care, though.

I like gettin’ old.

Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.

From very early on in my childhood – four, five years old – I felt alien to the human race. I felt very comfortable with thinking I was from another planet, because I felt disconnected – I was very tall and skinny, and I didn’t look like anybody else, I didn’t even look like any member of my family.

A lot of my audience are in their 50s. But they want me to pretend to continue to be pretending.

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.

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.

My father was a dreamy fellow – he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games.

I think I’m constantly in a state of adjustment.

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.

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.

I’ve always thrived on the encouragement of others.

My mother answers all my fan mail.

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

I had to learn, really, how to rein in my energies and discipline myself. And I found it very very useful. I rebelled against it at first, but it’s a good thing to have.

We never threw a record together. Each record was done really seriously, as if our life depended on it.

If you feel good about who you are inside, it will radiate.

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.

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

An artist wears his work in place of wounds.

I’m not a very analytical person.

For everything bad, there’s a million really exciting things, whether it’s someone puts out a really great book, there’s a new movie, there’s a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life.

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.

I don’t believe people playing rock n’ roll should have crowns. We’re not kings and queens. Anybody can play it.

I know I’m a strong performer. I’m not an evolved musician.

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.

I wanted to go to Portland because it’s a really good book town.

I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf.

I like really hot coffee, not too strong.

I was actually born in Chicago, and then when I was a toddler, my parents moved to Philadelphia.

My daughter is one of my greatest inspirations. She’s an environmentalist, she plays piano, she’s raising money for the earthquake victims in Nepal. Every day she surprises me and teaches me something.

I’m not afraid of terrorism at all. I’m afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of global comradeship.

An artist wears his work in place of wounds.

When I was young, all I wanted was to write books and be an artist.

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.

Rock n’ roll is dream soup, what’s your brand?

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.

I was raised in rural south Jersey, and there was no culture there. There was a small library, and that was it. There was nothing else.

I’m not part of any movement; I don’t like being fettered.

I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world.

I want to be around a really long time. I want to be a thorn in the side of everything as long as possible.

I don’t believe any artist who says, ‘I had to do that because DJs will tell me I can’t play that music. I will lose my job.’ Well, lose the job and create a new job. If your label won’t let you have the cover you want or sing the songs you want, then leave!