Patti Smith

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

“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.”

“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 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.”

“If I've learned one thing in life, it's not to be so judgmental of other people.”

“Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.”

“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.”

“Even as a child, I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want to wear red lipstick.”

“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.”

“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 think we have a creative impulse where suffering can magnify our work, but so can joy. You can be in love and write the greatest love song ever. Sometimes I think too much suffering makes...”

“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...”

“I would rather write or record something great and have it overlooked than do mediocre work and have it be popular.”

“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...”

“More than anything, that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to sin...”

“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...”

“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.”

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

“The only thing I daydreamed about was being an opera singer. But I was so skinny and so pathetic that that sort of wasn't going to happen.”

“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.”