Patti Smith Quotes

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

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.

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.

I never thought I was gonna live to 30.

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.

In fact, I thought my calling was to be a painter.

Jesus died for somebody`s sins but not mine.

I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.

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

I like gettin` old.

When I was younger, I also dreamed of being an opera singer, simply because of Maria Callas.

If I have any regrets, I could say that I`m sorry I wasn`t a better writer or a better singer.

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.

Everyone thinks of God as a man - you can`t help it - Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man.

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.

Then I read Little Women, and of course, like a lot of really young girls, I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.

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

Jesus died for somebody`s sins, but not mine - My sins are my own, they belong to me.

Maybe I`ll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.

I didn`t really expect it to go anywhere.

Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.

My mother answers all my fan mail.

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.

Christianity made us think there`s one heaven.

The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.

My sunglasses are like my guitar.

An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.

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`ve always thrived on the encouragement of others.

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.

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.

I was still a baby bird when I was 28.

Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.

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