“As a citizen, hopefully I'm humanist. As an artist, I'm free.”
Patti Smith0 likes
“As a citizen, hopefully I'm humanist. As an artist, I'm free.”
“In the '60s, I used to love rock magazines; I'd cut out pictures of Bob Dylan and John Lennon.”
“You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.”
“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.”
“I'm not afraid of terrorism at all. I'm afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of global comradeship.”
“Why do we write? A chorus erupts. Because we cannot simply live.”
“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.”
“I haven't had the most thrilling lifestyle. I was a pretty good dresser, but I would have a pretty boring 'Behind the Music.'”
“Throughout my life, I happily deferred to family, companions, children.”
“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.”
“What I wanted in life always was to write something as good as 'Pinocchio.' I wanted to write. I wanted to evolve. I wanted to grow.”
“I've always believed in having a sense of balance and stealth.”
“People wouldn't know this about me, but I adore ball gowns. I love their cut, their architecture and the thought of the hands of so many seamstresses working on them.”
“I would rather write or record something great and have it overlooked than do mediocre work and have it be popular.”
“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.”
“Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.”
“I had a handful of records, but when I was 11 years old, I liked Puccini as much as Little Richard. They both made sense to me.”
“I get irritated with the world. I get irritated with politicians. I get very irritated with governments and with corporations, but in terms of imagination - my imagination is always fertile. I'm either thinking of my own things or constantly engaged by the things that other people do.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. There's nothing cool about being self-destructive.”
“The thing I've always liked about performing is that I decide what I want to wear, whether I want to comb my hair.”
“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.”
“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!”
“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.”
“Even as a child, I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want to wear red lipstick.”
“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 could feel the gravitational pull of home, which when I'm home too long becomes the gravitational pull of somewhere else.”
“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 wanted to go to Portland because it's a really good book town.”
“I've lost lots of men in my life, besides my mother, which is a whole different loss.”
“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.”
“I was quite an insomniac. I rarely slept as a child. Having God to talk to at night was nice.”
“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.”
“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.”
“People have the power to redeem the work of fools.”
“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.”
“I feel a real responsibility to the images I get attached to.”
“In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.”
“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.'”
“I love playing the Fillmore. I love the walk from the hotel and climbing up those old, iron stairs that lead to the stage. I imagine Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors and all those other great bands climbing those same stairs.”
“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.”
“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.”
“An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.”
“If I've learned one thing in life, it's not to be so judgmental of other people.”
“I'm always writing. And, I mean, I always counsel people when they call me a musician: I really do not have the skills of a musician. I really don't think like a musician, though I love music and I perform and sing.”
“Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.”
“Sometimes you're doing really well, then, after three or four years, everything inexplicably crashes like a house of cards and you have to rebuild it. It's not like you get to a point where you're all right for the rest of your life.”