Patti Smith

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

“Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.”

“Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.”

“Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.”

“In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for pra...”

“...the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He di...”

“I could feel the gravitational pull of home, which when I'm home too long becomes the gravitational pull of somewhere else.”

“Everything comes down so pasteurized everything comes down 16 degrees they say your amplifier is too loud turn your amplifier down are we high all alone on our knees memory is just hips that...”

“Why do we write? A chorus erupts. Because we cannot simply live.”

“He wasn't supposed to die,' he cried out, somewhat desperately, petulantly, like a spoiled child. But I could hear other thoughts racing between us. Neither are you. Neither am I.”

“This is what I know - Sam is dead. My brother is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. My husband is dead. My cat is dead. My dog, who was dead in 1957, is still dead. Yet still I keep...”

“We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.”

“Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.”

“A writer or any artist can’t expect to be embraced by the people. I've done records where it seemed like no one listened to them. You write poetry books that maybe 50 people read. And you ju...”

“I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand, that Joplin had the last drunken throat, that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.”

“I feel a real responsibility to the images I get attached to.”

“Nothing bothered me, not even the things that bothered me.”

“I believed he would once again embrace the knowledge that there is no pure evil, no pure good, only purity.”

“Please, no matter how we advance in technology please don't abandon the book-there is nothing in our material world more beautiful than a book.”

“Every Saturday I would go to the library and choose my books for the week. One late-autumn morning, despite menacing clouds, I bundled up and walked as always, past the peach orchards, the p...”