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.
Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.
First of all, anybody who has lasted 30 and went through the 60's is really a survivor.
Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.
I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.
I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf.
A day doesn't go by where I don't create something.
I never thought I was gonna live to 30.
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.
I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer.
I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world.
What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and se...
I was so unhealthy as a child, and at least three or four times my parents were told to get ready, that I would not make it.
If I feel any marginalisation, it's because the things that concern me aren't so important to other people.
Well, I'm not one of those people who needs the limelight. If I'm performing, that's what I'm doing. If I'm not, I don't long for it. I don't need the approval of an audience, or applause.
My father was a dreamy fellow - he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games.
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 learned a lot from Arthur Rimbaud. People talk about how he wanted to be a seer and do that through the derangement of the senses. What they forget was that he also advocated, sternly and austerely, that one must be able to go through all that - an...
C'mon, I mean who didn't listen to 'The Who' in the 60s?
When I was young, all I wanted was to write books and be an artist.
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.
Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about.
