Quotes by Patti Smith

About Patti Smith:

Patricia Lee is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. For nothing is more precious than the life force and may the love of that force guide you as you go.

Patti Smith

I'm more materialistic about myself than I am about objects

Patti Smith

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 swing like a clock the past projects fantastic scenes tic/t...

Patti Smith

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

Patti Smith

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.

Patti Smith

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

Patti Smith

Why do people want to know exactly who I am? Am I a poet? Am I this or that? I've always made people wary. First they called me a rock poet. Then I was a poet that dabbled in rock. Then I was a rock person who dabbled in art.

Patti Smith

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.

Patti Smith

...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 did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not,...

Patti Smith

I reflected on the fact that no matter how good I aspired to be, I was never going to achieve perfection

Patti Smith

Observing people taking in the work I had watched Robert create was an emotional experience. It had left our private world. It was what I had always wanted for him, but I felt a slight pang of possessiveness sharing it with others. Overriding that fe...

Patti Smith

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

Patti Smith

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 prayer.

Patti Smith

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

Patti Smith

Christ was a man worthy to rebel against, for he was rebellion itself.

Patti Smith

I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth

Patti Smith

We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing...

Patti Smith

It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies (p. 171).

Patti Smith

He took twelve pictures that day. Within a few days he showed me the contact sheet. "This one has the magic," he said. When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us.

Patti Smith

Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.

Patti Smith

Author Bio

  • NamePatti Smith
  • DescriptionAmerican singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist
  • BornDecember 30, 1946
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionSinger-songwriter; Poet; Visual Artist; Human Rights Activist; Writer
  • AwardsCommandeur Des Arts Et Des Lettres?; National Book Award